“Revertible” Firmware PS4 by Modded Warfare: this could be the future of PS4 hacks
There hasn’t been any news or even rumors for a PS4 Jailbreak on latest firmwares, and it seems Firmware 9.00 will remain the “golden firmware” of hacks for the time being.
Firmware “rollback” is now where everyone’s been looking, as more and more tools are made available to revert a PS4 to some previous firmwares. There are significant limitations to the technique, which is why people are reluctant to call it a “downgrade”, but basically if you have the right soldering skills, it becomes possible to create a backup of your 9.00 PS4, and then switch back and forth between 9.00 and the latest firmware. The caveat being of course that you need a PS4 on Firmware 9.00 to being with.
Modded Warfare has published a video where he iterated on this process, and integrated a Teensy 2++ inside his PS4, to make the switch between firmwares even easier. He says changing firmware now takes about 15 minutes.
Revertible PS4 by Modded Warfare
I was tempted to call this a “Dual firmware” PS4, but in the current state of Modded Warfare’s experiments, there is a bit of work involved to go back and forth between the two firmwares, so it’s not just the push of a switch yet.
The concept is simple, and iterates on the firmware revert system that Modded Warfare demonstrated late last year: create a backup of the necessary files and chips (soldering required) on your PS4 9.00, then once you have that, it’s “fairly” straightforward to update to the latest firmware, then revert back to 9.00 by copying the backup files back to their original location. The “copying” step requires a Teensy 2++, and is done through PS4 Syscon Tools.
What this new process innovates on, is that the Teensy board is now integrated inside the PS4 console: once that is done, there is less soldering required, generally speaking less steps, so that going back and forth becomes easier.
Limitations
As we can see in the video, there are limitations to Modded Warfare’s technique, but I’m assuming the technique could be refined further in order to limit the impact.
First of all, some minor soldering/desoldering appears to be necessary on the Teensy board, every time one reverts the firmware. I’m assuming a hardware switch would be enough to get rid of this requirement.
Secondly, Modded Warfare mentions every time a revert is done, the data on the hard drive is technically “lost”, as a firmware reinstall is required. In this case, I’m assuming that having two hard drives (one for each version of the firmware), and doing a swap before rebooting, would be enough to avoid the issue. Of course, I’m sure some people will imagine ways to have two hard drives plugged in and switch easily.
I can’t wait to see how people will take this to the next level. Maybe we’ll start seeing some true “dual firmware” PS4s sometime soon?
I sense a future e4 flasher coming soon.
Um, NO!!!!
Id be happy to now buy a ps4 pro and downgrade it to 9.00. Yep I do have soldering skills, so would be interested to see where this goes
But why? Sony can almost certainly detect if you used homebrew and then downgraded, so they can ban you at will, meaning you lose your account and all purchases made.
There is a simple risk-free solution that requires no soldering: Have two PS4s, keep one offline on 9.00 for jailbreaking and one on the latest firmware to go online with.
Used PS4s are cheap now.
Besides kiddies looking to aimbot and wallhack in CoD, who in their right mind would want to go online with a dual fw ps4?
It’s not on PSN in an Exploited way, that can only happen if the latest firmware is jailbroken.
Once you switch back to the 9.0 you’ll be offline.
Plus its not about that, there’s alot of people myself included that prefer modding to playing games.
It’s a passion lost on most modern softmodders who only do it f it’s easy, free and enables piracy.
They cannot detect what physically does not exist.
We have all seen someone ask if they can go back to a normal stock PS4 from their current jailbreak.
The answer since 5.05 was yes, just d/l the latest official Sony update and that’s it and nobody’s claimed to be banned doing this.
The reason this is so involved and requires genuine skill is because you are literally updating to latest firmware which resets EVERYTHING to stock so using a second hdd for PSN won’t detect it.
A Jailbreak is not permanent, it’s purely software based and entirely hdd/Web based.
You are correct in having 2 PS4s is a simple alternative but that’s not why most of us are here.
Most of us LOVE the ACHIEVEMENT of doing this.
Unfortunately we now live in a world where we’ve been spoilt by easy exploits, soft mods.
So much so that anything involving a soldering iron is beyond alot of “modders” and considered too much effort.
But if you can hardmod this isn’t that hard plus a Teensy board is dramatically cheaper than anorther PS4 and can be done in a matter of hours.
You could charge ALOT for a console modded this way.
Compared to the days of chippings height these solder points are basic.
Clarification, I meant Sony can detect it once you upgrade again and go online after first downgrading and using homebrew.
No they can’t.
Explain in detail how Sony would spot it?
It’s a Jailbreak not CFW.
Also, even though I block all downloads using DNS the system still attempts to update f/w and game patches but obviously fails.
If you were banned It wouldn’t still do this.
So can i downgrade to any version not only the previous ?
You need to have made a backup of your console when it was on that previous firmware. The likelihood that you ask that question AND did a backup is very small.