Fail0verflow demonstrate Linux and Steam running on Firmware 4.05
Marcan42 of Fail0verflow fame was at the CCC33 event this year, to explain how Fail0verflow exploited the PS4 hardware in order to run Linux on the PS4.
The presentation goes back to all the pain the hackers had to go through in order to make Linux compatible with the PS4 architecture, which Marcan42 described several times throughout the presentation as “not being a PC” as it lacks lots of the legacy architecture bits required for a computer to constitute what is known today as an IBM compatible PC. Fail0verflow had demonstrated and released their PS4-compatible fork of Linux a year ago.
Marcan42 explained how the base of the hack consisted in a man-in-the-middle attack of the PCIE bus on the PS4, with the rest of the presentation focused on why several patches were required on the linux kernel for it to run on a PS4. Towards the end of the demonstration, Marcan ran Steam on the PS4 to confirm 3D Hardware acceleration was working.
