PlayStation 5 jailbreak hack goes public & could lead to PS5 piracy

Andrew Highton
sony playstation 5 console

A jailbreak exploit has struck Sony’s PlayStation 5 console with the powerful piece of tech potentially capable of playing PS5 games for free.

Since its release, the PS5 has been an absolute beast of a machine with the overwhelming demand for consoles still proving to be an issue nearly 2 years after its launch.

Also, rumors abound that the next version of the generational behemoth is in the works with reports indicating that a new PS5 Slim could be incoming.

In the meantime, Sony has a potential banana skin to clean up though as it appears as if the OG model could be susceptible to a new jailbreak exploit that could possibly make a ton of games for the hardware completely free to download and play.

Jailbreak exploit for the PS5 discovered

Thanks to the efforts of one Twitter user, it appears as if Sony’s PlayStation 5 console now has a full jailbreak exploit available that allows games to be played for free — even ones that are unavailable.

Lance McDonald revealed to the social media platform a video of them having access to the PS5’s Debug Mode and showing off a bunch of secret settings that ordinarily aren’t supposed to be accessible.

After going through all the available options, they then revealed the potential capabilities of the exploit as the user installed the long lost P.T demo on the console in a matter of seconds.

Lance also followed up this with a subsequent tweet that gave more in-depth details on the exploit and how to potentially implement it on your own PlayStation 5 console.

However, jailbreaking is completely illegal and for this reason, we feel it’s best not to share the process as doing this is a crime punishable by jail or large fines.

For the time being though, Sony will be breathing a sigh of relief as even though the console’s Debug menus can be navigated, games can’t be played just yet as the hackers still need to crack the Hypervisor execution protection.

Not only that, but it seems like the exploit could be limited to the 4.03 version of the PlayStation 5’s firmware cycle, so as soon as a new system update is live then progress could be lost.

In any case, this is one of the biggest security breaches of the PS5 to date, and we’ll monitor the situation to see if Sony acknowledges everything that’s going on.

About The Author

Andrew Highton is a former Games Writer for Dexerto. He has a Creative Writing degree from Liverpool John Moores University and has previously written for games websites such as Twinfinite and Keengamer. With 13,000+ PlayStation Trophies to his name, Andrew is a fan of a huge variety of video games, his favourites being God of War and Metal Gear Solid. Contact him at andrew.highton@dexerto.com, on Twitter @AndyHighton8 or at www.linkedin.com/in/andrew-highton.