HN Gopher Feed (2017-10-20) - page 1 of 10 ___________________________________________________________________
The First PS4 Kernel Exploit: Adieu
167 points by Aissen
https://fail0verflow.com/blog/2017/ps4-namedobj-exploit/___________________________________________________________________
faragon - 7 hours ago
Their PCI-Express bus hack is amazing.
[deleted]
afandian - 8 hours ago
I think you've been exploited.
jacquesm - 7 hours ago
Prescient! 4 years and a bit.
unkown-unknowns - 7 hours ago
On Reddit they call it Beetlejuicing./r/beetlejuicing
K0nserv - 8 hours ago
Am I reading it correctly that it's possible to invoke syscalls
from Javascript? That seems like a monumentaly bad idea...
GranPC - 8 hours ago
No, that's just a library they made that uses a WebKit exploit to
invoke a ROP chain to run syscalls.
DSMan195276 - 6 hours ago
Not directly. The exploit referred to by the title is a kernel
exploit, but to execute the kernel exploit you need to be able to
already run user code. They're using a Webkit exploit to run
their user code.
microcolonel - 8 hours ago
I guess it makes sense that the vulns would be in Sony's new kernel
code, and not in its FreeBSD ancestor.
nkg - 7 hours ago
Is it me or Sony has become good at protecting its software ? I
remember a time when every new console would be hacked within the
year it was released.
nkg - 4 hours ago
Psx, PS2, Wii, PSP have been hacked to their bone, it was a great
time because of the community it had created. All these people
focused on finding exploits and sharing the most obscure
techniques to restore a bricked device! I don't see this anymore.
Maybe they are mining bitcoins or playing Candy crush.
TazeTSchnitzel - 7 hours ago
If anything the PS4 is a downgrade from the PS3 here. The PS3 ran
everything in a hypervisor.
emodendroket - 6 hours ago
I guess if people want this to happen they should goad George
Hotz by telling him he can't possibly beat the protection.
VectorLock - 4 hours ago
Guy is too busy raging about self-driving car regulations and
making ODBII dongles.
rjeli - 6 hours ago
George is banned from exploiting Sony products
mlrtime - 6 hours ago
Isn't everyone?
hmschreck - 5 hours ago
Not like he is. If memory serves, if he tries to break a
Sony device again, he faces massive fines, etc.
KGIII - 4 hours ago
Do you have a good link for some backstory on this one?
I'm not sure how that could even be possible in the legal
frameworks.
icebraining - 3 hours ago
Terms of the settlement:
https://www.gamespot.com/articles/sony-hotz-settlement-
detai...
KGIII - 3 hours ago
Holy crap! Thanks!That's insane. I'm not a gamer but it
looks like they just published how to "hack" the console
and they were hit with that. That's crazy. In the span of
a minute, I can think of a dozen better solutions to
this.If I'm reading properly, they didn't even do
anything that I'd call wrong. They found an exploit and
published it. I suppose the DMCA and "circumvention
tools" come into play - but that only points to the
absurdity of the situation (at least in my opinion).
icebraining - 3 hours ago
Sony threw everything at them: DMCA, CFAA, copyright,
California Computer Crime Law, even violating the PSN
TOS.
KGIII - 3 hours ago
I support IP rights, as a general rule. However, they
sure get abused. I'm kind of annoyed about this, even
though I have nothing to do with it.If you break my
system, thanks for letting us know. It'd be great if we
could pay you to help fix our system and make it more
difficult to break in the future.I'd not take them to
court. I'd try to hire them. Hell, I'd give them reward
money - even if they didn't want to be hired.
ChristianBundy - 2 hours ago
Intellectual property is theft.
KGIII - 2 hours ago
Sure, inasmuch as taking labor without payment is
slavery.
gruez - 7 hours ago
xbox one also hasn't been hacked.
[deleted]
martin_bech - 5 hours ago
Whats xbox one?.. :)
oculusthrift - 7 hours ago
I don?t know much about it, but some other users were implying
that they now use freebsd when previously they rolled their own
OS. If that?s the case, it makes sense.
teh_klev - 6 hours ago
The PS3 appears to run a fork of FreeBSD:https://en.wikipedia.o
rg/wiki/PlayStation_3_system_software
monocasa - 6 hours ago
This is why you don't trust Wikipedia. They're just using a
couple FreeBSD subsystems (net & fs AFAICT), sort of like you
would with a rump kernel.Their kernel is so far from FreeBSD
though that it doesn't even have a fork(2).http://www.psdevwi
ki.com/ps3/LV2_Functions_and_Syscalls
mikewhy - 7 hours ago
PS3 was out for ~3 years before it was hacked.
mackal - 6 hours ago
It wasn't worth hacking the PS3 because of OtherOS. They
removed it, it was hacked.
DCKing - 7 hours ago
It's interesting to see that this is a vulnerability caused by PS4
specific kernel modifications. I guess it's good news for FreeBSD
users that PS4 jailbreaks do not imply vulnerabilities in
FreeBSD.Conversely, I'd imagine the PS4 jailbreak community is
vigourously looking for privilege escalations in FreeBSD, but no
results so far. I wonder if anyone familiar with it could shed some
light on whether that's a correct way of looking at it.
faustocarva - 8 hours ago
How huge is this?
bluehazed - 8 hours ago
This is an old exploit that has been since patched by Sony in
firmware 4.07 (the last section of the article shows the fix).
ninh - 8 hours ago
Sony appears to have patched it from firmware 4.06 and up. The
adieu in the title appears to refer to bidding a farewell to the
exploit rather than a codename for it ;-)Great and insightful
write-up nonetheless!
hd4 - 6 hours ago
From what I've observed, this is where the unending cat-and-mouse
game begins for Sony.
ygjb - 5 hours ago
In fairness, it started back when Sony shipped their first
piece of hardware with technical measures to prevent users from
consuming the media of their choice :)
jarjoura - 5 hours ago
Naw, the homebrew/piracy groups have been around since the
birth of the console industry. It?s been an ongoing cat and
mouse game for over 30 years at least.
Cyph0n - 7 hours ago
qwertyoruiopz[1] claims to have achieved kernel-level code
execution on 5.00. It's probably not going to be released to the
public anytime soon, but it's still not over for the PS4 homebrew
scene.[1]: https://twitter.com/qwertyoruiopz