A group of hackers claims to have made the first discovery in the process needed to unlock the PS5 in the future.
The fail0verflow group, which gained notoriety for being the first to circumvent the PS3’s security measures in 2010, posted a tweet claiming it had achieved something similar with the PS5, with a screenshot that appeared to show the root keys of the PS3 PS5 (via VGC).
This was confirmed in a follow-up tweet that read: “Translation – we got all the PS5 root keys (symmetric). All of them can be obtained from the software – including the console root key, if you look hard.”
Finding the root keys might be one of the first steps to “unlocking” a console, but the fail0verflow discovery doesn’t mean the PS5 has yet been fully compromised.
Symmetric root keys allow hackers to decrypt files, including firmware, which means hackers can try to reverse engineer and look for exploits that can be used to run unsigned code on the console.
The group also says it may not be particularly easy for Sony to reverse this with a system update. When another Twitter user asked if the root keys could be ‘rotated’ easily, the group simply replied “no”.
Translation: We got all (symmetric) ps5 root keys. They can all be obtained from software – including per-console root key, if you look hard enough! https://t.co/ulbq4LOWW0
— fail0verflow (@fail0verflow) November 8, 2021
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