When it comes to the console platforms, there’s always protection put in place to keep pirates and hackers at bay. Still, that doesn’t completely prevent some hackers from dabbling into the system and providing users with unofficial software, cracks, and the ability to play unofficial video game titles. It’s usually a cat and mouse game with hackers. While Sony along with Microsoft has mainly kept their current-generation console from being completely hacked with current video game releases, it looks like there is a new discovery on the PlayStation 2 that may prove to be problematic on next-generation consoles.
This is purely speculative at the moment, but those that are interested in tweaking their console software to run homebrew or cracked content may find this as exciting news. A user that goes by the name cTurt has managed to hack his PlayStation 2 to play unofficial video game titles all with the disc drive. Those with the experience or technical know-how may find his write up to fully explain the process of interest.
However, for others, this method essentially exploits the DVD player by inserting a burned disc which essentially allows the console to start running unofficial video game titles. It’s an easy method as before there have been processes that require players to open up their console and insert mod chips or conduct several steps to play unofficial software. Things don’t stop there as the hacker has shown interest in seeing if the same or similar method he is doing will work on the PlayStation 4 and if that’s the case we very well could see the PlayStation 5 along with the Xbox Series X get hacked very early on into the console life cycle.
Of course, this is speculative as mentioned, but it did capture the interest of this hacker already which means that if this picks up then we could see Sony and Microsoft scrambling to put in new security measures for the current-generation and next-generation consoles. Furthermore, because Sony has opened up the bug bounty program which would pay thousands of dollars for the discovery of exploits, this individual could very well decide to alert Sony of their process discovery for the PlayStation 4 and refrain from alerting the internet how to exploit the console.