3 ms·
> since using a vanilla kernel would make a public exploit in say, FreeBSD, easily ported to their device You mean like at the recent CCC where they demonstrat
by Asooka 10y ago
> since using a vanilla kernel would make a public exploit in say, FreeBSD, easily ported to their device
You mean like at the recent CCC where they demonstrated using a WebKit exploit to trigger a BSD exploit via which they install a working Linux system on a PS4 and launch Steam? Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QMiubC6LdTA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QMiubC6LdTA
It's not as simple as that because the PS4 is a custom board, so even though the CPU and GPU are standard AMD components, some hacking was required. But using exploits that have long been patched to gain access to hardware by Sony and Nintendo is nothing new.
- m45t3r 10y agoNote that I didn't say it was impossible to port a BSD exploit to it, I just said that it was harder. I don't know the specific version of FreeBSD/NetBSD that PS4 uses, but lets say it is FreeBSD 9. I am sure that not all CVEs in FreeBSD 9 are portable to PS4, and even when it does work it will need additional some additional work because of the differences between PS4 kernel and vanilla *BSD. Another observation: if PS4 used Linux, Sony would be forced to open the modified PS4's Linux kernel thanks to GPL License, and would be trivial to check for security exploits since you have the source code.