Playstation 4 kernel exploit paves the way for jailbreak and homebrew software on firmware 4.05

A kernel exploit for the Playstation 4 running firmware 4.05 has been released on GitHub. The exploit has been named 'namedobj' and paves the way for a full jailbreak of the console, which in its turn will allow users to run homebrew applications.

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The code released on Github doesn't contain any functionality that breaks DRM,  or that in itself makes homebrew apps possible. Instead it opens the door for other exploits that are able to do so. The 'namedobj' exploit opens port 9020 and then waits for arbitrary code to be uploaded which is then executed with kernel privileges.

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The exploit uses a combination of a known WebKit exploit and the kernel exploit. To use the exploit, the Playstation 4 browser needs to visit a specially prepared webpage that can be downloaded from the Github repository. When that step is succesful, the console will wait for further instructions on port 9020.

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So while it's now possible to run code with kernel privileges on the Playstation 4, other code has to be released that actually does the jailbreaking and that makes it possible to run homebrew software.

The foundation of the exploit was released about two months ago by a hacker team called 'fail0verflow'. The work was continued by an user named SpecterDev who also posted thorough details on the exploit.

We host this page with the specially prepared webpage  (short url: https://goo.gl/LPACSB). It's however untested, the exploit possibly requires a local web server like XAMPP (120MB) or  Uniform Server (30MB).

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