The PlayStation 5 may be about to get completely compromised soon – but hackers will need one specific game to make it happen.
PlayStation 5 Could Be Completely Exposed Now
As explained by The Cybersec Guru, the PlayStation 5 could now be completely compromised, in the same level as the Nintendo Switch and the PlayStation 3 were.
Both the PlayStation 3 and Nintendo Switch were compromised on such a basic level that both Sony and Nintendo decided to make new consoles with secured hardware instead of trying to patch the consoles what were already out in the wild.
Just How Bad Is It For The PlayStation 5?
This stems from a huge data dump of Sony’s code that happened last December 31, 2025. Among the data included were the Level 0 BootROM keys for the PlayStation 5.
The bootrom level comes in immediately after a PlayStation 5 turns on. At this point, the console uses code called ROM keys to authenticate the user.
The bootrom code is burned into the PlayStation 5’s CPU and cannot be patched or changed in any way. Obviously, having the ROM keys opens everything up for hackers.
The Cybersec Guru makes this analogy:
It is akin to losing the master key to the bank vault, rather than just knowing how to pick the lock on the front door.
Where Does The Physical Game Come In?
As reported by Resell Calendar, hacker Gezine revealed that gamers need a physical game to enable the PlayStation 5 jailbreak.
Incredibly enough, it turns out the game in question is Star Wars: Racer Revenge for the PlayStation 4, released in 2019. This is actually a repackaging of a PlayStation 2 game originally released in 2002.
Star Wars: Racer Revenge is easy to get digitally on modern platforms. However, the physical PlayStation 4 version only got 8,500 copies from Limited Run Games.
As a result, prices for this specific game has already spiked.
Welcome Back, Cubic Ninja!
The situation today is a mirror of 2014. Nintendo faced a dilemma back then when physical copies of 3DS game Cubic Ninja could open up the console to homebrew.
The 3DS did not yet get completely compromised yet. But the situation created a run for Cubic Ninja, a poorly reviewed puzzle game that would have otherwise been completely forgotten.
It took Nintendo until 2016 to remove the Cubic Ninja exploit. But at that point, hackers came up with other exploits that didn’t need the game to work.
Sony can probably expect hackers to create future exploits that won’t need Star Wars: Racer Revenge at all. At this point, we don’t know how far the hackers will get or if Sony will be able to stop them fast enough.
Ultimately, it’s a scary situation for Sony’s hardware security division. Some fans may be looking forward to pirating games, but this exploit could also be used to hack into PSN once again.
For now, we can only watch and see how this situation plays out.
