Hacker Announces PlayStation 5 Kernel Exploit for Firmware 14.00 and 14.10

Security researcher notnotzecoxao is developing a kernel exploit called “Prolapse” for PlayStation 5 firmware versions 14.00 and 14.10. Sony keeps strengthening the console’s security, and hackers and tech enthusiasts continue to look for new ways to break into the system firmware.

Researchers had previously managed to hack PlayStation 5 firmware up to version 13.60. The exploit’s name caused some confusion, so notnotzecoxao explained the naming scheme: Lapse covers firmware up to 10.01, Relapse covers firmware up to 13.60, and his Prolapse targets firmware up to 14.10.

Hacker announces kernel exploit for PlayStation 5 firmware 14.00 and 14.10 — Image source: Sony Interactive Entertainment

notnotzecoxao also published a detailed post about the recent PlayStation 5 firmware update to version 14.20. He explained that the update fixed TOCTOU use-after-free and double-free vulnerabilities. Such vulnerabilities occur when the state of a resource, such as a file, changes between the moment it is checked (Time-of-Check) and the moment it is used (Time-of-Use).

His analysis showed that the update adds a new generation-ID check and slot validation after the thread lock is released:

This is a classic fix for a TOCTOU use-after-free and double-free vulnerability. When the aio_multi_delete function drops the lock to reacquire the AIO object, another competing thread can manage to free the corresponding slot and allocate it again. In version 14.10, the sub-objects of the object substituted by the attacker would then be freed. The new generation-ID check filters out the reused slot before the memory is freed. This is the same aio_multi_delete deletion chain that the Lapse family exploited, so any thread race exploitation primitive in aio_multi_delete that worked on versions up to and including 14.10 is “dead” [no longer works] on firmware 14.20.

notnotzecoxao did not say when he plans to release a public version of the Prolapse exploit.

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