It was bound to happen. A fake “GoldHEN 2.0.1.b” payload has been spotted on some exploit hosts, that has been reported to brick consoles, as confirmed recently by Al-Azif.

While there’s not much you can do to recognize a piece of software that could damage your Jailbroken console, there are a few things you can do to protect yourself from potential issues. You can use any or all of the solutions below to reduce your risk.

Fake GoldHen v2.0.1b Brecking consoles
Thank you pic.twitter.com/QJLkxqZe7b

— SonysNightmare 🏴‍☠️ (@SonysNightmare) October 1, 2021

0. Make a copy of your console’s sflash

(Adapted from Zecoxao‘s post at playstationhax)

The SFlash is useful for when something might happen to your ps4 (some changes that affect the console in a way that it won’t be able to boot later). In case you need it you’ll need to use it together with a hardware flasher device to undo the changes you made to flash that caused the console to brick.

What you’ll need:

* A Jailbroken PS4 running an FTP Payload (e.g. sleirsgoevy’s Jailbreak at https://sleirsgoevy.github.io/ps4jb2/75x/ )
* ftp client such as filezilla or flash fxp

Steps:
1-Enable the ftp server through your exploit (e.g. click on “JB+FTP” on Sleirsgoevy’s page)
2-Connect with the client
3-Navigate to
/dev/
4-There should be a device called sflash0. Download it.
5-Make sure its exact size after the download is finished is 33554432 bytes/  32768 KB / 32 MB

Congratulations! You should have your sflash 🙂  Keep it safe in a location only you know in case something goes wrong with your ps4.

1. Use Trusted Hosts and payloads only, or run you own host

When in doubt, go back to basics. The one host I would trust 100% today is Sleirsgoevy’s, which can be found at the urls below (depending on your firmware)

1. https://sleirsgoevy.github.io/ps4jb2/75x/ (7.55)
2. https://sleirsgoevy.github.io/ps4jb/index702.html (7.02)
3. https://sleirsgoevy.github.io/ps4jb/ (6.72)

There are of course lots of other PS4 exploit hosts that are 100% trusted. Understand that we can’t provide a list at the moment due to the ongoing confusion.

Remember that you can also host your own host locally, using Al-Azif’s ps4-exploit-host. We explain how it’s done here, although our tutorial is specific to 4.05. You’ll have to grab the 7.55/7.02/6.72 exploits from Sleirsgoevy’s github and put them on your local host in the “exploits” folder.

Important: running your own payloads doesn’t make you 100% safe, if you don’t know where the payloads came from and whether they are safe or not. As a rule of thumb, download and use payloads only once you have sufficient confirmation from the scene that they are safe to use.

2. Make a mental blacklist of hosts that have made “mistakes” in the past

There is unfortunately no list of which hosts have been spreading the malicious fake “GoldHEN 2.0.1b” payload. It’s also unclear if they’ve done this maliciously, or just by mistake. Either way, if you’ve spotted such hosts, it’s safe to say they don’t have your console’s security in mind, and you should avoid them moving forward. As Al-Azif puts it, it “shows that they weren’t paying attention and didn’t know what they were doing, jeopardizing their user’s console’s safety.”

Use a “one strike, your out” policy with the hosts you use. There are enough alternatives that you don’t want to give a second chance to a bad host.

Some hosts, I won’t name names… they know who they are, just host payload for the sake of hosting more payloads and don’t actually know what they are doing. Their knowledge stops at making a HTML buttons. This is how at least 2 users ended up with bricks previously.

— Al Azif (@_AlAzif) October 2, 2021

3. Get payloads from the developers themselves when possible

This is kind of what we implied in section 1 above, but it’s worth repeating. Most developers distribute their PS4 payloads through their own github, and that’s generally the best way to get those, in particular if you run them on your own server.

There’s a bit of difficulty with SiSTR0‘s GoldHEN, as the project itself is private. In the past, GoldHEN has been released through trusted scene members, and we can expect this will be the case as well when version 2.0 actually releases.

It’s worth mentioning that GoldHEN 2.0.1b indeed exists and is under a beta phase. A limited number of hosts actually run the legit version. But while the dust settles, my personal opinion would be to avoid running it for the time being.

Conclusion

The current status is a bit confusing, as trusted voices from the scene, Al-Azif included, do not want to play the “blame game” and name names. As a result, it is unclear which hosts have been found to host the bricking code.

Are there hosts you vouch for, or others you think are problematic? Let us know in the comments.