Not real, folks, sorry

We’ve all been a bit tense lately, eagerly waiting for some proper announcement of a potential PS4 jailbreak this year. A lot of us are hoping that a PS4 9.00 Jailbreak is right around the corner, but without any official confirmation from any trusted hacker so far, it’s been hard to keep hope.

In search for answers, a lot of us end up on weird websites that manage to top the google search results for popular queries such as “PS4 Jailbreak [insert your firmware here]” and more. But which sites to trust is a bit difficult to grasp for a lot of people. So let’s look below for a few signs to understand if that “PS4 9.00 Jailbreak” site you’ve just found is legit or not?

The Golden Rule (Is this PS4 Jailbreak site I just found for real?)

Here’s the golden rule: If a real, new PS4 Jailbreak comes out, you can be 100% sure that it will be on the frontpage of trusted scene websites within 24h. That random site you just found, that’s been providing a “PS4 9.00 Jailbreak”? It’s not mentioned on sites such as wololo.net, psxhax, psx-place, or the dedicated subreddit? That’s because it’s fake, end of story.

If you just found a site through a simple google search, that nobody on the scene has been talking about yet, you have to pause and ask yourself what are the odds that you found something nobody on the scene has found before you, including the news websites (such as yours truly) that are dedicating a huge portion of their day to hunting this kind of information. It’s not entirely impossible of course, in particular if the thing you just found is fresh (a week old or less?), but it’s very unlikely.

I’m not claiming my site (or other scene websites) know everything instantly, but information travels fast nowadays, and the news of a PS4 Jailbreak would in general be big enough that, again, most scene websites would have it frontpaged within 24h.

What are red flags to spot a fake “PS4 Jailbreak” site?

If the golden rule above is not satisfying enough to you, here are a few elements that should help you spot a fake “PS4 Jailbreak” site. Not all of the points below are necessarily true for all websites, but the more of these you see, the more suspicious you should be.

1. You’ve never heard of that site before, in particular you’ve never seen it mentioned on “regular” scene websites (see golden rule above)
2. Downloading the hack is convoluted and involves answering a survey, or going through a “wild goose chase” for multiple passwords (the file will tell you it is password protected, and the password can be obtained by going to another website, etc…)
   1. Or you can’t actually find a download link, only links to pages full of ads <– note that legit sites will also use questionable hosts, sometimes full of ads, for legit content, but if you have to click more than a couple of times to reach the file, you should start becoming suspicious.
3. The website offers a novel hacking method that no other scene site has mentioned before (e.g. a PS4 Downgrade. Something that is currently not* possible)
4. Dates are off on the site. For example, some comments that say “it works, thanks” are dated before the impacted firmware was even available.
5. The suspicious site is now added to your “facebook likes” without you remembering you ever did that (like-jacking)

What are the risks of visiting these fake sites anyway?

Most of these sites do this for simple money. In my experience, they are in general harmless but that’s not always the case. Here are the things that could happen to you if you download/install stuff from these scam sites:

1. You will waste your time, sometimes a lot of it. That one’s a given. In particular if you start answering surveys to get to your file
2. The owner of that site will get paid advertising revenue for the time you spent on their site, watching/clicking on their ads, answering surveys, etc…
3. You might download and install a virus, instead of what you think is a jailbreaking tool
4. You might unknowingly “like” their page on facebook, through a technique known as likejacking. This will increase their site’s popularity, and lure more people in the same trap as you.
5. You will generate a lot of confusion in the scene and work for actual scene websites if you start sharing your “discovery” online

The conclusion: stay tuned

I know we’re all impatiently waiting for something to happen in the PS4 scene for new firmwares. All I can say is, stay tuned, and check our PS4 Jailbreak page for the latest status.

* PS4 Downgrade is actually possible but requires a lot of effort, hardware skills, and planning, which most people looking for a PS4 Jailbreak will not have done. So for most people reading this, it is “not” possible.