While the world’s attention drawn to the exhibition of technical achievements of CES 2016, the hackers passed its own conference Chaos Communication Congress, in which they shared with each other the valuable experiences and presented their own achievements in the field of security. One of the most striking events was the demonstration of hacking a gaming console Sony PlayStation 4 in front of an enthusiastic audience. Hackers do not just managed to circumvent the protection of the Japanese consoles. They managed to run it on the Linux operating system and game console emulator pocket Nintendo Game Boy Advance.
The hackers themselves claim that the new Xbox One and PS4 is just a PC in a unique package. To prove it was quite simple: the hacker group Fail0verflow used its an exploit to run Linux on the console and get access to the entire gland. To the credit of the hackers, it should be noted that they do not plan to publish their findings freely available or somehow contribute to game piracy. They have only shown Sony and the public to the fact that the PS4 level of security leaves much to be desired.
On the other hand, this gap may well use other, more selfish group of hackers that will be able to develop software to run on PS4 pirated images of games outside the official protection. The advent of custom firmware and homebrew applications for the PS4 – it’s only a matter of time. The guys from Fail0verflow carefully studied software Japanese console and came to the conclusion that it really isn’t so far removed from modern personal computers. In some places, however, these differences are quite noticeable. For example, the modified kernel of a Linux system used in the PS4, has more than 7000 lines of code changes compared to the version for the PC.
Hackers especially impressed by the engineers of the company Marvell Technology Group, which designed the “South bridge” console. About the speakers they put it like this: “Apparently, these guys were Smoking some awesome shit right while you work”. The climax of the demonstration was to run the old emulator pocket console Nintendo Game Boy Advance and one game series Pokemon. The fact of starting the game on a Nintendo console Sony pretty amused room. Well, personally I like the fact the advent of piracy on the PS4 are not happy, as I in any case do not support this phenomenon. However, someone this piece of news will make happy. So I felt right to share it with our readers.