There is no publicly available Jailbreak for the PS5 as of August 2022. However, significant progress has been made on the PS5/PS4 hacking scene this year, thanks in particular to TheFloW’s bd-jb exploit chain, giving us hopes we open the doors of the console this year.
PS5: No Jailbreak publicly available at the moment
Released in November 2020, the PS5 has been on the market for almost two years, and the console initially seemed quite resilient against hackers. That was before Hacker TheFloW, and hacker collective Fail0verflow almost simultaneously announced they had fully hacked the console, at the end of 2021.
First, TheFloW (famous for multiple hacks and tools for the PSP, PS Vita, and PS4) showed he had access to the Debug Settings of the PS5, indicating he had a kernel exploit for the console. On the same day, Fail0verflow (known in particular for their work on the Wii and the PS3*) disclosed they had full kernel access to the PS5 and its decryption keys. They emphasized that their findings can be reproduced through software means (per opposition to hardware hacks).
Although none of the groups have released their PS5 kernel exploit, TheFloW did an extensive presentation, accompanied by a release of his files, of an exploit chain leveraging vulnerabilities in the Blu-Ray Driver of the PS5 (the exploits also work on the PS4). Named BD-JB, the exploit chain could theoretically lead to a full Jailbreak of the console (and we know from his screenshot in 2021 that TheFloW does have one), but the hacker conveniently left any kernel exploit out of his release. (And possibly for good reasons: nowadays, nobody really wants to be the first one to open the doors to piracy on a console, if only for legal reasons).
PS5 Jailbreak in 2022? BD-JB hope and PS4 Hack compatible with the new generation
Many hackers have managed to reproduce TheFloW’s work, including Sleirsgoevy who released his own implementation of the BD-JB exploits, but nobody’s been able to combine it with a kernel exploit at the moment. Either because there is no such exploit, or because it might not be enough.
We however know about at least one kernel exploit for the PS5. When a PS4 Jailbreak was released in December 2020, ZnullPtr, one of the developers working on the hack, stated that “the [PS4] Kernel exploit affects PS5 as well“, while precising that work on the PS5 was nowhere near ready.
Although it appears that all ingredients are now here to make a PS5 Jailbreak happen, the scene has been surprisingly silent about any progress on that front, which tells us things have been harder than we can imagine. ZnullPtr again, made a few statements in that direction a few months ago, saying in particular: “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”
Additionally, it’s possible that the lack of availability of PS5s on the market has been slowing down hackers to some extent.
PS5 Jailbreak, what’s next?
If you own a PS5 and are hoping for a Jailbreak, there is one golden rule you have to follow: Do. Not. Update. The BD-JB exploit and Kernel exploit have most likely been fixed in one of the recent firmwares. It is assumed that BD-JB was patched in 5.00, and the POOBS4 Kernel exploit was patched in 4.50. What this means is that it’s better to be on 4.50 than 5.00 or above, and it’s better to be on 4.03 than 4.50 or above.
If you stay on a firmware that predates the release of these exploits, you’re most likely fine (21.02-04.03.00 sounds like it’s safe right now?). Beyond that (21.02-04.50.00 and beyond), all bets are off. In any case, stay on as low a firmware as you possibly can. The ideal situation being of course if you have a PS5 you can afford to not update at all.
Will 2022 bring us a PS5 Jailbreak? Nobody can predict the future of course, but it looks like all the stars are aligned to make it happen.
* Fail0verflow have also found significant vulnerabilities on the PS4 and Nintendo Switch, but have recently refrained from publicly releasing information until after the consoles were broken open by other groups.
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