Fail0verflow to announce a PS4 Jailbreak next week?
Some hints at a potential PS4 hack form popular group Fail0verflow just came to my attention. This is just at the rumor level at this point and could turn out to be something entirely different, but the evidence is quite compelling.
I was just contacted with a link to the CCC Wiki, indicating that Marcan, one of the main members of Team Fail0verflow (known for having hacked the Wii U, and, before that, the PS3), will be having a talk at the CCC event this year. The talk is entitled: “Console Hacking 2015: Penguins on Aeolia”
So how does this point to a PS4 hack? Well, let’s rewind a bit.
What is the CCC?
Wikipedia tells us: The Chaos Communication Congress is an annual conference organized by the Chaos Computer Club. The congress features a variety of lectures and workshops on technical and political issues related to Security, Cryptography, Privacy and online Freedom of Speech.
Every year a bunch of hackers meet at the CCC and talk about hacking and security. Console hacking, every year, is a big part of the conference. This year, Smealum will be there to talk about his work on the 3DS, and apparently fail0verflow will be here too.
CCC is big, back in the days, Tyranid also explained the PSP Prometheus project at the CCC. The Prometheus project resulted in what is known today as the Pandora batteries for PSP, a way to mod the PSP batteries so that the PSP will enter “maintenance mode” and make it possible to install custom firmwares and downgrades.
Who are Fail0verflow?
Fail0verflow are the group who hacked the PS3. You might remember the screenshot below:
That screenshot is from their presentation at the CCC in 2010, when they explained how they had hacked the PS3.
Defeating the PS3 encryption was definitely not Fail0verflow’s only successful hack. They were also the first ones to run unsigned code on the Wii in 2007, and hacked the Wii U two years ago.
So in general, when these guys have a presentation at the CCC, you know something heavy is going to happen.
Penguins on Aeolia == Linux on PS4?

Aeolia, the Floating Island
Fail0verflow had announced earlier on the CCC wiki that they would be hosting an event to talk about console hacking in general, hinting more at some Wii U follow up and existing hacks than anything else.
This new entry in the Wiki however indicates a full presentation from Marcan. And it strongly hints at a PS4 hack, specifically, installing Linux on the PS4.
Looking at the content of the talk again, we see: Console Hacking 2015: Penguins on Aeolia – To boldly go where no penguin has gone before.
What do we make of this? Well, it’s going to be a presentation about console hacking (duh), and it’s probably going to be about installing linux (penguins). Because the presentation states “where no penguin has gone before”, it is safe to assume we’re talking of one of the new generation consoles (Wii U, XBO, or PS4).
The last, and probably most crucial part of the title, is “Aeolia”.
WTH is Aeolia? Well, digging into the PS4 Dev Wiki (thanks John!), we find lots of references to Aeolia in the PS4 Boot process log. At this point, it is now very likely that Marcan’s talk is going to be about installing Linux on the PS4.
Now, the talk is short (5 minutes), so Fail0verflow will probably only showcase that they have Linux running on the console, without going into details of the hack. That part might, or might not, happen next year.
It’s unclear at this point if this PS4 Jailbreak will be running on the latest firmware, or 1.76 and below just like the most recent announced PS4 Kernel exploit. So, do you think this will be a huge reveal, or just some kind of troll?
Many thanks to John who sent me the wiki link!
wololo the 32c3 is the biggest congress for hackers in europe if not the whole world. All of your readers should look up the talk of Tyranid about the PSP security. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TgzxyO2QO1M
Kind regards and maybe we will meet some day at the CCC 😉
Gosh, how did I forget to include Tyranid’s awesome talk in the article, I’ll fix that!
WOWW!! I can’t wait for that
oh boy , oh boy , am so excited ,,, this is the good news to end 2015 with 😀 ,, i will be like ( are we there yet ) 🙂
Am I hearing a comeback for Other OS on Sony consoles?
@wololo .
so that means maybe some jailbreaks will release soon ?
when will release ?
@CrOw
Thats easy my friend. They already said it will realease April 1st. Stay tuned!!!
Come on man…u kidding me
I believe I speak for everyone here when I say that my crystal ball needs a little tuning up to reveal this information, sorry.
Yeah I’m sure Wololo knows since he make the jailbreak
/s
I guess we can expect something similar to their Wii U talk, though less in-depth. A few quick details, a cool PoC to show off, but no release nor plans for one due to a lack of homebrew ecosystem, and not wanting to enable piracy. Plus, part of the argument for not releasing the Wii U exploits when they were originally found was that the Wii U just wasn’t an interesting enough piece of hardware to bother writing homebrew for, and with the PS4 being essentially a locked-down PC, I don’t see the case being any different here.
Either way, should be fun to see it all in action. Maybe there’ll be a more detailed presentation next year going through the entire exploitation process.
ps4 being a locked down PC makes it very interesting. I would love to see all my native x86/x64 apps run on the x64 platform. and why not try to write my own is that would run on the ps4. won’t that be cool? it would be a nice practice for students like me studying operating system? and finding the caevets on the freebsd kernel and see how it was exploited would be a very interesting learning curve. ta…da…. I am desperately waiting for the details.
I’m crazy to come one Ps4 jailbreak, hopefully come soo:)
Wololo to speculate next week? Click here so we can tell you what to think!
Hope this could mean the return of OtherOS on playstation.
If this allows us to run SteamOS on one’s ps4 I would go absolutely bonkers.
Whatever it is about.. it’ll be something i cannot wait for.
I smell the conception of PS4 emulation on PC. What a wonderful smell, that smell of a new PC.
What could linux open up in terms of hacking on ps4?
I would look forward for the detail about how will the penguins dance on the ps4. And the tyranids talk is the benchmark of all the console hacking talks. Let us expect more depth security talks about ps4 and how those certain vulnerability lead to exploiting it. How the bootchain was hijacked if any boitchain was hijacked and how the security checks were disabled. I am hoping for a positive talks about security and beating them.
If they succeed to run Linux on PS4, that will be crazy !!! It will an opened platform 100x better that everything has been done on the xbox360 🙂
But what about vita 🙁
Are we talking full, unrestricted Linux on PS4? Even on an older firmware that’s impressive. Total control of the hardware for anything we’d want… the mind boggles.
agreeeeeed
Looks like this talk (if it will really happen) is going to be a very very short talk. Console Hacking at 32C3 only states the Nintendo 3DS at the moment and i don’t see any other registered conferences tagged with this.
Also, look at the duration time that is expected for this talk: “5”. So i think it’s minutes. That’s not much at all. I think they will only present what they were able to do at this time – nothing more (no explanation or anything else). They did it the same way years ago – asides from real conferences. But it looks like they will only will have a very short time this year once again.
whohoow
i want a
ps4 android lollypop
ps4 win10
ps4 ubuntu
ps4 macosXX
and a
psvita all of the same via homebrew and via cartridges ?.?
greetz
Ps4 cfw is the best!!!!!!
http://streaming.media.ccc.de/32c3/relive/7560/ scroll to 1:31:20