Hacking consoles is nothing new. There’s not one in the history of the gaming industry that hasn’t seen a hack of some sort. And now the first hack for the PlayStation 4 is available.
Hacker group Fail0verflow was able install in Linux OS on the console. They presented their work at a Chaos Communication Congress event in Hamburg.
The PS4 Linux OS is available for free download on GitHub. So what do you do once you’ve hacked into the best-selling modern console?
Play Pokemon, of course.
The demo ended with the presenter playing a modified Pokemon Emerald, which they called “Pokemon PlayStation Version,” on the hacked PS4.
In a blog post on the site, hacker marcan said that finding exploits in the PS4 was “relatively easy.” The group’s focus from here out will be to work on Linux patches, rather than helping people find exploits in the system.
This comes after years of experimenting with creating communities around hacked consoles. Fail0verflow believes that focusing on the patching the Linux kernel, “might even have a net positive effect: if we can get people interested in running Linux on the PS4 over using the native OS,” marcan writes, “We can redirect efforts away from reverse engineering the original software infrastructure (which is what the piracy guys need, and they inevitably leech off of those efforts) to Linux.”
If you want the nitty-gritty technical run-down of what happened, you can read the full blog post here.
Previously, Fail0verflow hacked the Wii, the Wii U, and the PlayStation 3. They had expressed disinterest in the PS4 as a target, but changed their minds, saying, “It’s hard enough to be interesting, and easy enough to be practical.”
A video demonstrating the PlayStation 4 booting and running Linux at the 32nd Chaos Communication Congress is viewable on YouTube.
