PS4: Homebrew and backups running on firmware 4.55, technical details coming soon | Hacker News Reader

PS4: Homebrew and backups running on firmware 4.55, technical details coming soon

wololo.net

67 pointsloppers929 comments

Current PS3 versions can't be hacked, at least without hardware mods. I wonder if that's because they are actually flawless, or just there is nobody trying (or people who do try don't publish what they find). It nevertheless sounds funny to me that the PS4 can be hacked while the PS3 can't.

Probably easier to hack the ps4 since the ps4 is x86 based and the ps3 is powerpc and there are just a lot more people with some knowledge of x86 systems.

No system is actually flawless. That's pretty much impossible. It's far more likely the latter.

Apart from what acomjean mentioned already (which is definitely an influence), the ROI on such a hack is pretty low. The PS4 was released 3-4 years ago and the PS3 was discontinued anywhere from 1-3 years ago, both depending on your region. In any case, it's an old system and people have moved on to newer and shinier consoles.

The PS3 has also had hardware-less exploits in the past, CFWs were all the rage. It's not like it's never been exploited or anything. The ECDSA private key used for signing software was released, even.

In the case of the PS3 I believe its mainly a case of effort VS reward. The older firmwares are completely broken, the chances of Sony making a mistake that big a second time are low. I think developers in the console scene would rather do a hardware downgrade to a firmware that gives them complete control of the system and patch newer software to run on it as necessary instead of wasting time looking for a new exploit that might not be there.

I really miss the old PSP homebrew/hacking "scene". Met some very cool people through it that I wouldn't have otherwise.

Would be super cool to see this blossom, but I'm guessing most if not all exploits nowadays will be kept hidden.

There is also a Vita (aka psp2) homebrew/hacking scene that's still alive. There is an SDK [1], a discussion channel on Matrix [2] which is bridged to IRC [3]. There is also a Reddit community [4] (although it's more used by users rather than devs).

[1] https://vitasdk.org/ [2] https://riot.im/app/#/room/#henkaku:matrix.org [3] #henkaku @ irc.freenode.net [4] https://www.reddit.com/r/vitahacks/

Indeed - that was one of the most vibrant, active homebrew scenes I've had the pleasure of participating in.

Ironically, I played more classic (SNES/PS1) and homebrew games than actual PSP games on my device. Nevertheless PSP "hacks" are what got me into exploring other types of hardware, and eventually jailbreaking iPhones when they were first released. I used to participate on an IRC channel frequented by George Hotz (geohot) and was present when the iPhone was finally jailbroken. For a device that had no app store or games at the time, this was a huge deal - and the homebrew scene quickly flourished.

I still get nostalgic thinking about how I'd spend my lunchtime in high school playing Tap Tap Revolution or SNES emulators on my iPhone...

For me it was crouching in the bushes in my front yard at 3am chatting on IRC with the PSP homebrew since I didn't have wifi, but my neighbors did. Very nostalgic time for me.

I'd love to downgrade from 5. I use the web browser at times on my Pro, and since 5 it's gone from speedy to so laggy and slow it's almost unusable.

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