11 ms·

Hacking the PS4 / PS5 Through the PS2 Emulator

210 points by phant0mas 4y ago

speeder 4y ago
If someone actually makes PS5 accept pirated games, I expect a boom to PS5 sales. I believe a good reason why the PS2 was so dominant was because of how widespread PS2 piracy was.
- witheld 4y ago
  PS5’s are still persistently sold out, it’s impossible for them to have an increase in sales
- marinhero 4y ago
  I don’t think it’s like that anymore. There are many servicies tied to a console nowadays and they solely function as just game machines. If Sony decides to prevent hacked consoles from having a PSN account or even going further into banning those accounts the incentive for piracy is very low. You’d also potentially lose future system updates making some games unplayable. In the old days, all you wanted and could do was play games so stakes were low. Now you have Netflix, NFL, and years of digital “goods” tied in there. I do agree with you that piracy played a big part on PS1, and PS2 success but the role of it in the modern day won’t be as important as in the past.
- 1970-01-01 4y ago
  PS2 was dominant because it had great games, backward compatibility (for awhile) and was also a DVD player. The piracy angle didn't affect sales, despite what Sony says.
  - GGO 4y ago
    It only helped sales in third world countries which to start with is not a big chunk of total sales, so doubt that it had any significant effect.
  - ChuckNorris89 4y ago
    Not true entirely. Yes all those features helped, but in developing markets, the ability to easily mod chip them to play pirated games was the real seller.
  - Gordonjcp 4y ago
    The same week that Sony launched the PS2 they also launched a 100-disc carousel CD/DVD changer as part of their home theatre kit. There might also have been a 200-disc changer, but I know the shop I worked in stocked one of the 100-disc changers. Just think! All your CDs and movies in one machine, that you can play on your big rear projection TV over your 5.1 surround speakers! Just think! They had absolutely no intention of releasing a version that was actually a PS2 with wireless controllers, and indeed thought the very idea that anyone would buy such a thing was laughable. That would have blown the market to pieces.
  - asdff 4y ago
    It was also out for so long that it gave it plenty of time to end up used for cheap. It seemed like everyone had one laying around or in the closet at home by the end of its run, usually a slim one honestly.
    - yamtaddle 4y ago
      DVD playback was huge when it came out. DVD players were still expensive so if you wanted one, it barely cost any more to get a DVD player that was also a PlayStation. Between that and PS1 backwards-compat, the PS2 was a bargain.
      - asdff 4y ago
        That's true with the latest consoles too, honestly. They are even better deals in terms of what you get. My Xbox one is nearing 10 years old and it still plays new games, it plays a lot of the older games if they've been ported at least (bone of contention I know it not being proper backwards compatibility), performantly runs all streaming services (can't be said about modern smart TVs), its a blu ray player, I have 5.5 tb of local storage on it, and I got it used for about the price of a modern game.
  - bitwize 4y ago
    PS2 was always backward compatible with PS1. PS3 was originally PS2 backward compatible, then they removed that feature to shave a few bucks off the BOM.
  - Cyph0n 4y ago
    You underestimate the impact of piracy in developing countries. It’s true that almost no one bought games at full price, so Sony was only seeing unit sales. However, once these countries developed further and the people who grew up with PS consoles started to make more money, guess which consoles and games these people decided to buy? Hint: it wasn’t Xbox! Long story short, easy access to piracy was a gateway to future PS game sales in many developing countries.
    - dizhn 4y ago
      I agree with what you're saying but I would not exclude Xbox. They were also hacked to play ripped games.
      - Aromasin 4y ago
        I can echo that sentiment. My original xbox was chipped. As a hacky kid with no money, it was the only way I could play new games. Guess who went on to own every xbox generation for the next 10+ years?
      - Cyph0n 4y ago
        Thanks for noting that. My experience growing up in the Middle East was very skewed towards Sony consoles.
    - morsch 4y ago
      About 130 of 160 million PS2s were sold in North America, Europe and Japan. Developing countries don't appear to be a significant market for the console. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlayStation_2_sales https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlayStation_2_sales
      - Asooka 4y ago
        "developing countries" in that context are places like the former soviet union, i.e. half of Europe at the time, or latin america. The hardware was hella expensive, but with several months of savings it was possible. The games were a different matter. You were basically buying imports from the other end of the continent with all the shipping and customs taxes that incurs. Piracy was what drove people's buying decisions.
- walrus01 4y ago
  I would rate this as a very low likelihood, because even if someone did come up with a way to pirate single player games (such as Horizon Zero Dawn/Forbidden West), the number of games now that are persistently online-only means that most people will be unwilling to give up that functionality. Any theoretical PS5 piracy would almost certainly require it to be completely disconnected from the Internet so that the firmware and operating system could not be updated (or verified by Sony).
  - lostgame 4y ago
    The reason the PS2 succeeded so massively is that it was an affordable DVD player alone, IIRC at the time you could buy a DVD player for like $199 or a PS2 for $299. It was a no brainer for any family looking to either replace their console or seek to upgrade to DVD - something which was a way bigger deal than the transition from DVD to Blu-Ray.
    - babypuncher 4y ago
      > something which was a way bigger deal than the transition from DVD to Blu-Ray. I always find that interesting, because to my eyes the quality jump from DVD to Blu-Ray is the biggest we've ever seen (and likely ever will see) in home video formats, way bigger than the move from VHS to DVD. I don't think DVD has aged particularly well, especially in a world of non-interlaced digital flat panel displays. A properly mastered Blu-Ray disc still looks considerably better than the HD streams being offered by just about any modern streaming service, but DVD generally looks worse than your typical 480p stream.
      - toast0 4y ago
        Blu-Ray may be a bigger leap in quality, but it's kind of DVD but better. DVD vs VHS gives repeatable high quality video and audio, no adjustment or cleaning, chapter seeking, mailability (which enabled netflix and others to offer a huge rent by mail catalog), durability in a reasonable size. Laserdisc had some or that, but the size was cumbersome and the capacity was too small. Some DVDs are poorly mastered, and modern encodings are better than mpeg2 at the same bitrate, but 480p DVD should compare well to bandwidth limited 480p streaming.
- babypuncher 4y ago
  I don't know about that, piracy on the Xbox was a lot easier than the PS2. It wasn't until FreeMcBoot came along around 2007 or 2008 that PS2 piracy really became accessible to the lay person, and that was after the 7th generation of consoles launched.
  - sudosysgen 4y ago
    You're in the Western world. In the third world you'd be buying your PS2 pre-chipped, lol.
    - babypuncher 4y ago
      Well when I look at a sales breakdown by region, the lions share of PS2s were sold in North America (54m), Europe (55m), and Japan (23m). That leaves 27m units divided amongst the rest of the world, notably including South America [1]. I have no doubt that viable piracy improves hardware sales in less fortunate economies, I just don't think it's enough of an effect to have the dramatic impact on global sales that was implied above. If you want a console whose global sales I think were driven in large part by piracy, look no further than the PSP. 1: https://www.vgchartz.com/charts/platform_totals/Hardware.php/ https://www.vgchartz.com/charts/platform_totals/Hardware.php...
      - worg 4y ago
        a nitpick, North America includes Mexico in those charts and as a mexican I can attest a lot of piracy went on in the PS2 / Xbox consoles back in the day
      - speeder 4y ago
        Also I doubt the charts include the most popular way of buying a console in Brazil: Buying one from USA. Sometimes even flying to USA, buying the console and flying back is cheaper than buying local. And during the PS2 era, everyone I knew that owned a PS2, bought it from a shop that sold modchipped PS2 that they bought from smugglers that got it from USA. Currently I see that with the Switch, of the people I know that own a game console, most of the time is a Switch, and most of the time is a pre-modded Switch imported from USA, usually an old hardware version with Atmosphere installed, because modchipped Switches are buggy.
- insane_dreamer 4y ago
  you already can't find a PS5 in stock anywhere, so sales can't increase any more at this point
- teawrecks 4y ago
  They don't have any trouble selling consoles right now, and historically they lose money on console sales. Afaik the PS2 was no exception, at least early on in its lifecycle.
  - TMWNN 4y ago
    >They don't have any trouble selling consoles right now, and historically they lose money on console sales. The PS5 became profitable in 2021.
- Narishma 4y ago
  I don't see how. PS5 sales are currently limited only by Sony's ability to make them.
EMIRELADERO 4y ago
Question: why would someone believe that responsibly disclosing vulnerabilities that only affect local devices and mostly enable the owner of a device to gain root access to it is the best thing to do, instead of just publishing them outright? I understand responsible disclosure for server vulns that could cause harm to third party's plattforms or devices, but it seems unnecessary for this case.
- VWWHFSfQ 4y ago
  There are so many ways for people to cheat in online games when they can manipulate the local state of their gameplay. I've personally completely stopped playing CoD online because cheating is so ridiculously out of control. I just want to play the game like a normal person. But it's no fun anymore.
  - Cloudef 4y ago
    Play fps games that have dedicated (community run) servers. Cheating is social problem, not technical. Centralized servers / matchmaking can never combat it.
- mixedCase 4y ago
  Chilling effects, I would guess: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_Computer_Entertainment_America,_Inc._v._Hotz https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_Computer_Entertainment_Am...
- jonny_eh 4y ago
  Cheating hurts innocent online gamers. Piracy hurts game developers/publishers. If you want a device you can hack, buy a PC (or a Steam Deck).
  - bitwize 4y ago
    If you want a device you can hack, don't play games on it. Within a few years, Pluton will give us airtight anticheat.
kaycebasques 4y ago
> In this article I will discuss how I successfully escaped the PS2 emulator developed for the PlayStation 4 Sounds like a great way to destroy Sony's motivation to support backwards compatibility :P
- nazgulsenpai 4y ago
  Their subscription service is probably good motivation.
djsavvy 4y ago
Anyone have a working link to part 2? The link at the bottom of the page [0] doesn't seem to work. [0] https://cturt.github.io/mast1c0re-2.html https://cturt.github.io/mast1c0re-2.html
- Avery3R 4y ago
  in the first paragraph > See also Part 2 (to be published),
Sunspark 4y ago
I wonder if Sony is now going to rip out the PS2 emulator. They've removed features before. They tore OtherOS out of the PS3. I don't see PS2 compatibility as being sacred to the PS5.
- joshschreuder 4y ago
  As mentioned in the article, it's sacred to the highest tier of PlayStation's new subscription service, so they won't remove it.
  - Sunspark 4y ago
    A service can change at any time. OtherOS came with the system in the box, and Sony tore it out after consumers had already purchased the system. A subscription service, they can just end it and refund people's money and call it a day. It's absolutely not set in stone. Unless they decide the revenue from the highest tier is worth leaving it in place. To be determined.
    - VanTheBrand 4y ago
      It’s fundamental to their subscription strategy. I would happily bet you $10,000 they don’t pull PS2 support in response to this.
    - boomboomsubban 4y ago
      They also lost a class action lawsuit over OtherOS, needing to pay people that used it $55. With PS2 emulation, I suspect far more people do use it and it would be much, much easier to prove you used it. This could lead to a huge settlement against them.
- darren_ 4y ago
  The ars technica article about this has some additional info from the hacker about sony not really being able to do this: "CTurt stressed to Ars that it would be nearly impossible for Sony to plug the hole that enables mast1c0re. That's because a version of the exploitable PS2 emulator in question is packaged with each available PS2-on-PS4 game rather than stored separately as a core part of the console operating system. [..] For physical PS2-on-PS4 discs, that means the exploit should continue to work as long as you refuse any online updates before playing. And for digital releases, even if the exploit is later patched out, there are methods to downgrade to a stored, exploitable version using proxy HTTP traffic from a local server." so there isn't just a single PS2 emulator in the PS4/PS5's OS, it's a per-game emulator.
wereHamster 4y ago
> by proxying PSN traffic (which is just HTTP, instead of HTTPS for server-side cost saving reasons). Lol who uses that argument in 2022? TLS cost is a rounding error with current generation of hardware.
- themoonisachees 4y ago
  I would imagine doing tls for millions of ps5s worldwide would register a blip, but it seems bonkers that psn is still using http. Maybe that's how it got hacked so much

210 points by phant0mas 4y ago

If someone actually makes PS5 accept pirated games, I expect a boom to PS5 sales. I believe a good reason why the PS2 was so dominant was because of how widespread PS2 piracy was.

witheld 4y ago
PS5’s are still persistently sold out, it’s impossible for them to have an increase in sales
marinhero 4y ago
I don’t think it’s like that anymore. There are many servicies tied to a console nowadays and they solely function as just game machines. If Sony decides to prevent hacked consoles from having a PSN account or even going further into banning those accounts the incentive for piracy is very low. You’d also potentially lose future system updates making some games unplayable. In the old days, all you wanted and could do was play games so stakes were low. Now you have Netflix, NFL, and years of digital “goods” tied in there. I do agree with you that piracy played a big part on PS1, and PS2 success but the role of it in the modern day won’t be as important as in the past.
1970-01-01 4y ago
PS2 was dominant because it had great games, backward compatibility (for awhile) and was also a DVD player. The piracy angle didn't affect sales, despite what Sony says.
- GGO 4y ago
  It only helped sales in third world countries which to start with is not a big chunk of total sales, so doubt that it had any significant effect.
- ChuckNorris89 4y ago
  Not true entirely. Yes all those features helped, but in developing markets, the ability to easily mod chip them to play pirated games was the real seller.
- Gordonjcp 4y ago
  The same week that Sony launched the PS2 they also launched a 100-disc carousel CD/DVD changer as part of their home theatre kit. There might also have been a 200-disc changer, but I know the shop I worked in stocked one of the 100-disc changers. Just think! All your CDs and movies in one machine, that you can play on your big rear projection TV over your 5.1 surround speakers! Just think! They had absolutely no intention of releasing a version that was actually a PS2 with wireless controllers, and indeed thought the very idea that anyone would buy such a thing was laughable. That would have blown the market to pieces.
- asdff 4y ago
  It was also out for so long that it gave it plenty of time to end up used for cheap. It seemed like everyone had one laying around or in the closet at home by the end of its run, usually a slim one honestly.
  - yamtaddle 4y ago
    DVD playback was huge when it came out. DVD players were still expensive so if you wanted one, it barely cost any more to get a DVD player that was also a PlayStation. Between that and PS1 backwards-compat, the PS2 was a bargain.
    - asdff 4y ago
      That's true with the latest consoles too, honestly. They are even better deals in terms of what you get. My Xbox one is nearing 10 years old and it still plays new games, it plays a lot of the older games if they've been ported at least (bone of contention I know it not being proper backwards compatibility), performantly runs all streaming services (can't be said about modern smart TVs), its a blu ray player, I have 5.5 tb of local storage on it, and I got it used for about the price of a modern game.
- bitwize 4y ago
  PS2 was always backward compatible with PS1. PS3 was originally PS2 backward compatible, then they removed that feature to shave a few bucks off the BOM.
- Cyph0n 4y ago
  You underestimate the impact of piracy in developing countries. It’s true that almost no one bought games at full price, so Sony was only seeing unit sales. However, once these countries developed further and the people who grew up with PS consoles started to make more money, guess which consoles and games these people decided to buy? Hint: it wasn’t Xbox! Long story short, easy access to piracy was a gateway to future PS game sales in many developing countries.
  - dizhn 4y ago
    I agree with what you're saying but I would not exclude Xbox. They were also hacked to play ripped games.
    - Aromasin 4y ago
      I can echo that sentiment. My original xbox was chipped. As a hacky kid with no money, it was the only way I could play new games. Guess who went on to own every xbox generation for the next 10+ years?
    - Cyph0n 4y ago
      Thanks for noting that. My experience growing up in the Middle East was very skewed towards Sony consoles.
  - morsch 4y ago
    About 130 of 160 million PS2s were sold in North America, Europe and Japan. Developing countries don't appear to be a significant market for the console. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlayStation_2_sales https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlayStation_2_sales
    - Asooka 4y ago
      "developing countries" in that context are places like the former soviet union, i.e. half of Europe at the time, or latin america. The hardware was hella expensive, but with several months of savings it was possible. The games were a different matter. You were basically buying imports from the other end of the continent with all the shipping and customs taxes that incurs. Piracy was what drove people's buying decisions.
walrus01 4y ago
I would rate this as a very low likelihood, because even if someone did come up with a way to pirate single player games (such as Horizon Zero Dawn/Forbidden West), the number of games now that are persistently online-only means that most people will be unwilling to give up that functionality. Any theoretical PS5 piracy would almost certainly require it to be completely disconnected from the Internet so that the firmware and operating system could not be updated (or verified by Sony).
- lostgame 4y ago
  The reason the PS2 succeeded so massively is that it was an affordable DVD player alone, IIRC at the time you could buy a DVD player for like $199 or a PS2 for $299. It was a no brainer for any family looking to either replace their console or seek to upgrade to DVD - something which was a way bigger deal than the transition from DVD to Blu-Ray.
  - babypuncher 4y ago
    > something which was a way bigger deal than the transition from DVD to Blu-Ray. I always find that interesting, because to my eyes the quality jump from DVD to Blu-Ray is the biggest we've ever seen (and likely ever will see) in home video formats, way bigger than the move from VHS to DVD. I don't think DVD has aged particularly well, especially in a world of non-interlaced digital flat panel displays. A properly mastered Blu-Ray disc still looks considerably better than the HD streams being offered by just about any modern streaming service, but DVD generally looks worse than your typical 480p stream.
    - toast0 4y ago
      Blu-Ray may be a bigger leap in quality, but it's kind of DVD but better. DVD vs VHS gives repeatable high quality video and audio, no adjustment or cleaning, chapter seeking, mailability (which enabled netflix and others to offer a huge rent by mail catalog), durability in a reasonable size. Laserdisc had some or that, but the size was cumbersome and the capacity was too small. Some DVDs are poorly mastered, and modern encodings are better than mpeg2 at the same bitrate, but 480p DVD should compare well to bandwidth limited 480p streaming.
babypuncher 4y ago
I don't know about that, piracy on the Xbox was a lot easier than the PS2. It wasn't until FreeMcBoot came along around 2007 or 2008 that PS2 piracy really became accessible to the lay person, and that was after the 7th generation of consoles launched.
- sudosysgen 4y ago
  You're in the Western world. In the third world you'd be buying your PS2 pre-chipped, lol.
  - babypuncher 4y ago
    Well when I look at a sales breakdown by region, the lions share of PS2s were sold in North America (54m), Europe (55m), and Japan (23m). That leaves 27m units divided amongst the rest of the world, notably including South America [1]. I have no doubt that viable piracy improves hardware sales in less fortunate economies, I just don't think it's enough of an effect to have the dramatic impact on global sales that was implied above. If you want a console whose global sales I think were driven in large part by piracy, look no further than the PSP. 1: https://www.vgchartz.com/charts/platform_totals/Hardware.php/ https://www.vgchartz.com/charts/platform_totals/Hardware.php...
    - worg 4y ago
      a nitpick, North America includes Mexico in those charts and as a mexican I can attest a lot of piracy went on in the PS2 / Xbox consoles back in the day
    - speeder 4y ago
      Also I doubt the charts include the most popular way of buying a console in Brazil: Buying one from USA. Sometimes even flying to USA, buying the console and flying back is cheaper than buying local. And during the PS2 era, everyone I knew that owned a PS2, bought it from a shop that sold modchipped PS2 that they bought from smugglers that got it from USA. Currently I see that with the Switch, of the people I know that own a game console, most of the time is a Switch, and most of the time is a pre-modded Switch imported from USA, usually an old hardware version with Atmosphere installed, because modchipped Switches are buggy.
insane_dreamer 4y ago
you already can't find a PS5 in stock anywhere, so sales can't increase any more at this point
teawrecks 4y ago
They don't have any trouble selling consoles right now, and historically they lose money on console sales. Afaik the PS2 was no exception, at least early on in its lifecycle.
- TMWNN 4y ago
  >They don't have any trouble selling consoles right now, and historically they lose money on console sales. The PS5 became profitable in 2021.
Narishma 4y ago
I don't see how. PS5 sales are currently limited only by Sony's ability to make them.

EMIRELADERO 4y ago

Question: why would someone believe that responsibly disclosing vulnerabilities that only affect local devices and mostly enable the owner of a device to gain root access to it is the best thing to do, instead of just publishing them outright? I understand responsible disclosure for server vulns that could cause harm to third party's plattforms or devices, but it seems unnecessary for this case.

VWWHFSfQ 4y ago
There are so many ways for people to cheat in online games when they can manipulate the local state of their gameplay. I've personally completely stopped playing CoD online because cheating is so ridiculously out of control. I just want to play the game like a normal person. But it's no fun anymore.
- Cloudef 4y ago
  Play fps games that have dedicated (community run) servers. Cheating is social problem, not technical. Centralized servers / matchmaking can never combat it.
mixedCase 4y ago
Chilling effects, I would guess: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_Computer_Entertainment_America,_Inc._v._Hotz https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_Computer_Entertainment_Am...
jonny_eh 4y ago
Cheating hurts innocent online gamers. Piracy hurts game developers/publishers. If you want a device you can hack, buy a PC (or a Steam Deck).
- bitwize 4y ago
  If you want a device you can hack, don't play games on it. Within a few years, Pluton will give us airtight anticheat.

kaycebasques 4y ago

> In this article I will discuss how I successfully escaped the PS2 emulator developed for the PlayStation 4 Sounds like a great way to destroy Sony's motivation to support backwards compatibility :P

nazgulsenpai 4y ago
Their subscription service is probably good motivation.

djsavvy 4y ago

Anyone have a working link to part 2? The link at the bottom of the page [0] doesn't seem to work. [0] https://cturt.github.io/mast1c0re-2.html https://cturt.github.io/mast1c0re-2.html

Avery3R 4y ago
in the first paragraph > See also Part 2 (to be published),

Sunspark 4y ago

I wonder if Sony is now going to rip out the PS2 emulator. They've removed features before. They tore OtherOS out of the PS3. I don't see PS2 compatibility as being sacred to the PS5.

joshschreuder 4y ago
As mentioned in the article, it's sacred to the highest tier of PlayStation's new subscription service, so they won't remove it.
- Sunspark 4y ago
  A service can change at any time. OtherOS came with the system in the box, and Sony tore it out after consumers had already purchased the system. A subscription service, they can just end it and refund people's money and call it a day. It's absolutely not set in stone. Unless they decide the revenue from the highest tier is worth leaving it in place. To be determined.
  - VanTheBrand 4y ago
    It’s fundamental to their subscription strategy. I would happily bet you $10,000 they don’t pull PS2 support in response to this.
  - boomboomsubban 4y ago
    They also lost a class action lawsuit over OtherOS, needing to pay people that used it $55. With PS2 emulation, I suspect far more people do use it and it would be much, much easier to prove you used it. This could lead to a huge settlement against them.
darren_ 4y ago
The ars technica article about this has some additional info from the hacker about sony not really being able to do this: "CTurt stressed to Ars that it would be nearly impossible for Sony to plug the hole that enables mast1c0re. That's because a version of the exploitable PS2 emulator in question is packaged with each available PS2-on-PS4 game rather than stored separately as a core part of the console operating system. [..] For physical PS2-on-PS4 discs, that means the exploit should continue to work as long as you refuse any online updates before playing. And for digital releases, even if the exploit is later patched out, there are methods to downgrade to a stored, exploitable version using proxy HTTP traffic from a local server." so there isn't just a single PS2 emulator in the PS4/PS5's OS, it's a per-game emulator.

wereHamster 4y ago

> by proxying PSN traffic (which is just HTTP, instead of HTTPS for server-side cost saving reasons). Lol who uses that argument in 2022? TLS cost is a rounding error with current generation of hardware.

themoonisachees 4y ago
I would imagine doing tls for millions of ps5s worldwide would register a blip, but it seems bonkers that psn is still using http. Maybe that's how it got hacked so much