The latest PlayStation Portal update has supposedly addressed an exploit that allowed PlayStation Portable (PSP) games to be emulated natively on the streaming handheld.
This is according to a recent X / Twitter post by Andy Nguyen that was first spotted by VGC. An employee at Google, Nguyen previously claimedthat they were part of a small team that was able to get PSP games running offline on the PlayStation 5 peripheral via some hacking and the open-source emulator PPSSPP.
Now, however, Nguyen says that the exploit they used to get the software installed and running has been patched after they “responsibly reported the issues to PlayStation.” This alleged change comes as part of the latest PS Portal software update, version 2.0.6.
“Responsible reporting” is for security vulnerabilities… It’s extremely hard for me to believe that jailbreaks like this should be considered security vulnerabilities, especially if it’s something local-only or otherwise limited to something only the owner of the device would feasibly be able to do.
Does anyone believe the portable is actually a more secure device now than it was before this patch?
Unfortunately, the way that jailbreaks are done is by exploiting actual security vulnerabilities. So yes, responsibly reporting them is the right thing to do.
Our ire here should be for Sony, for not supporting this through an official safe method. Not for security researchers just doing security research.
I believe it‘s less secure now because it‘s future became more uncertain. How can we be sure it won‘t become a glorified brick the moment servers shut down?