It’s that time of the year, where we give you a refresher course on where we stand on PS5 hacking and Jailbreak. Long story short: in 2022 and 2023, cracks started to show in the PS5’s security. Unsigned code execution is possible on almost every firmware, but a full Jailbreak is still only a distant dream at this point.

PS5 Jailbreak 2023 Status

Here are some of the key things that happened over the past few months, around PS5 security:

• Late 2022, a Kernel exploit was released for the PS5, impacting firmwares 3.00 to 4.51 included. To be more precise, Firmwares 3.00, 3.10, 3.20, 3.21, 4.00, 4.01, 4.02, 4.03, 4.50, 4.51 are supported.
  • Unfortunately, the scene progressively discovered how much more secure the PS5 is than the PS4, with even a Kernel exploit not enough to properly jailbreak the console.
• The Mast1c0re exploit, impacting both the PS4 and PS5, was disclosed late 2022, with a fully functional implementation released early 2023. This usermode exploit uses a vulnerability in PS2 games running on the PS5. It allows PS4-level usermode homebrew and PS2 iso loading. To our knowledge, this exploit isn’t patched as of the latest PS5 firmware (7.20 at the time of writing)
• PlayStation Hacker CTurt, before leaving the scene, has shared multiple PS5 critical vulnerabilities with Sony, which got patched in firmware 7.20. This makes firmware 7.20 particularly interesting, and firmware 7.01 even more so. Comparing the two firmwares could lead to understanding what those vulnerabilities are (CTurt did not publicly disclose them)

What’s required for a PS5 Jailbreak

Historically, hacking a system typically requires two main things: 1) a way to run unsigned code (what we usually refer to as a usermode exploit on the console hacking scene), and from there 2) some sort of privilege escalation to gain full control of the console (what is typically called a kernel exploit). The ins and outs of how those two aspects are achieved can depend on the target system, but that’s the gist of it.

In the case of the PS5 though, we’ve found out that there’s much more than that which is needed. Although the Kernel exploit has given some access to the console for hackers, that access remains limited because of the multiple mitigations in place to secure the console. This includes the Hypervisor of course, but other security features such as XOM.

So to summarize the current status from the section above, people on PS5 Firmware up to 4.51 have higher chances than others to see a full Jailbreak on their console eventually, with rumors that Firmware 4.00 patched something significant. As always, for the purpose of hacking a console, staying on a lower firmware is always the right idea

ZNullPtr in particular has disclosed a bit of the security and mitigations in place to prevent privilege escalation on the PS5, about a year ago:

They tried to make it similar to xbox security, where there is a HV + virtualized app container. So even if you get a kernel exploit, you can’t immediately pirate the games. However, hypervisor locking up registers and other mitigations make it 100x harder to get there even

— ZnullPtr

PS5 Jailbreak – ETA Wen

Although the release of the Kernel exploit late last year raised hopes for the scene, it’s clear at this point that the PS5 is fairly secure, and that a “traditional” Jailbreak might not be in the cards any time soon.

However, with the existing Kernel exploit up to firmware 4.51, the hopes that firmwares up to 7.01 might be impacted by significant vulnerabilities, and the Mast1c0re exploit giving us some level of unsigned code execution on all firmwares, there might be ways to achieve some level of “user friendly” homebrew execution for end users. This is something that ZNullPtr hinted at, early April 2023.

Conclusion

As of May 2023, no Jailbreak for the PS5 has been released, and anyone claiming they have it is most likely lying to you (possibly for profit, don’t click on their surveys).

The likelihood of a full fledged Jailbreak (which would probably mean hacking the very secure PS5 Hypervisor) is very, very thin. With that being said, the PS5 is impacted by multiple vulnerabilities of various severity levels, some of which are not publicly know yet. The scene has also demonstrated that unsigned code execution is definitely possible, if limited.  At the very least, in the not-so-distant future, we could expect some sort of PS5 Homebrew environment, with the tools available currently.

“Never say never”, though, and when the situation evolves, it will be on the frontpage of wololo.net, so stay tuned.