Sony Awarded a Hacker $50,000 for Privately Reporting a PS5 Exploit He Found With AI — Now He's Public Enemy Number One
A hacker sparked an uproar within the PlayStation 5 homebrew scene for privately reporting an exploit to Sony and cashing in on a $50,000 reward, rather than keeping it confidential for the community.
A hacker named Jordy received a $50,000 reward from Sony for privately reporting a PS5 exploit that was discovered using artificial intelligence. Instead of keeping the exploit confidential for the homebrew community, Jordy reported it to Sony, triggering controversy. The exploit, known as a 'Hypervisor Bug,' affects PS5 consoles running firmware versions 13.60 to 14.00 and allows hackers to execute kernel code to run Linux on the machine.
The bug was initially found by a security engineer, theflow0, who intended to keep it secret until the release of GTA 6. Jordy, using AI, found the same bug and reported it to Sony, closing the window for Sony to patch the exploit. Sony paid Jordy the bounty to prevent other hackers from discovering the exploit before GTA 6's launch.
This decision left modders who wanted to run Linux on their PS5 consoles in a difficult situation, either keeping their console offline or updating it to play GTA 6 while losing access to Linux. The incident highlights the ongoing battle between Sony and hackers in the homebrew scene, with AI playing a significant role in the discovery of vulnerabilities.
Written by urgent.news from IGN's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
