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Sony Fixed Exploit That Let PlayStation Portal Run Emulated PSP Games After Hackers 'Responsibly Reported Issues to PlayStation'

Thick Thighs Save Lives

NeoGAF's Physical Games Advocate Extraordinaire
One of the Google engineers who hacked the PlayStation Portal to run emulated PSP games has said Sony has now fixed the exploit after his team "responsibly reported the issues to PlayStation."

In February, Andy Nguyen, who works at Google on cloud vulnerability research, and Calle Svensson, a security engineer at Google, took to social media to show a PlayStation Portal running PSP game Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories natively.

Sony released the PlayStation Portal as a handheld game streaming device that wirelessly connects to the PlayStation 5. Officially, it is not possible to play games natively on the PlayStation Portal. But Nguyen and co hacked the PlayStation Portal to run the PPSSPP emulator, which meant no Wi-Fi streaming was required.
At the time, Nguyen said the hack was “all software based”, which meant hardware exploitation was not required — but the team had no plans to release the hack.

Now, Nguyen has tweeted to say the bugs were fixed with the recently released 2.06 update after “we responsibly reported the issues to PlayStation.”

It’s fair to say there has been some backlash to the revelation that the team disclosed the exploit to Sony, something Nguyen has expressed bemusement at. “No idea why you folks cry about the disclosure,” Nguyen said in a follow-up tweet. “If we just released to the public, do you think Sony would just leave it unpatched? Reporting vs. not reporting is only a few weeks of difference.”
 

Saber

Gold Member
Yeah sure, could have reported it if you wanted. Why announce you reported it? Why even share it at all in the first place if you didn't wanna make it public and intended to have it fixed?

lol

I think he wants to be officially acknowledge as a cunt.

I don't think theres wrong in reporting issues though. But reporting what is a good function in conjuction with smug smartass attitude is something else.
 

Killer8

Member
“No idea why you folks cry about the disclosure,” Nguyen said in a follow-up tweet. “If we just released to the public, do you think Sony would just leave it unpatched? Reporting vs. not reporting is only a few weeks of difference.”

Classic example of very smart people being extremely dumb in other areas.

It's not about how fast Sony will patch it. Releasing it to the public means people will actually get to use it, albeit in a limited window of time and potentially reducing the functionality of the device in other ways (I assume you need to keep it updated to use the streaming feature).

Otherwise all of this has just been mental masturbation to show that it can be done. Who actually gives a fuck about that? People want something in their hands.

It's like me saying "look guys I cured cancer buuuut i'm not actually gonna release the cure - just showing I can do it!"

Fuck off.
 

iHaunter

Member
This was shocking to me tbh. I have two brothers-in-law and they both bought the peripheral and like it.
I actually want it since I have a daughter. I just refuse to pay that high of a price for a non-oled screen. Especially for a screencast emulator.

I suspect the OLED version will come out later this year or next year and the LCD version price will drop by $50.
 

Portugeezer

Member
Missed opportunity to sell this not so popular product to more people.
The product sold well enough and if they really gave a shit they'd make it official, not via an exploit. You can play PSP games via PS Plus Premium ®™©

This was shocking to me tbh. I have two brothers-in-law and they both bought the peripheral and like it.
Out of the blue, my brother bought one for his son, because his PS5 is in the living room and sometimes the kid wants to play.
 

poppabk

Cheeks Spread for Digital Only Future
For finding and reporting a security vulnerability to Sony?
It's kind of douchey to show off the hack in a way that gives a function people really want knowing it won't be available to them. They could have just done "hello world" or got Doom running.
 
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Nankatsu

Member
The world we live in today, lol.

Hackers doing the "responsible thing" and reporting back to the company.

Miss the good old days.
 
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The world we live in today, lol.

Hackers doing the "responsible thing" and reporting back to the company.

Miss the good old days.
That's...literally what hacking was and always has been. In fact companies have always hired hackers to find exploits their systems may have and report them.

I feel like many people don't know the difference between hacking and cracking...

Literally the definition of hackers vs crackers:

Hackers are professionals with good intentions who hack systems to gain knowledge or for a specific purpose, usually to protect data and improve network strength. Crackers, on the other hand, are people who hack with bad intentions, often resulting in data theft, corruption, or system harm.
That's exactly what happened here. "The good ol' days" was like this as well.
 

Markio128

Gold Member
That's...literally what hacking was and always has been. In fact companies have always hired hackers to find exploits their systems may have and report them.

I feel like many people don't know the difference between hacking and cracking...

Literally the definition of hackers vs crackers:


That's exactly what happened here. "The good ol' days" was like this as well.
That was a cracking hacking explanation.
 

Mokus

Member
It sold out immediately and is still sold out.
Really? I wonder how many units are produced? I own many PlayStation products because I love the brand. But the PS Portal is simply something that I will never buy. For example, in my opinion, PS TV is a much better product in the PlayStation family than PS Portal.


Edit: In Germany the PS Portal is in stock in multiple online stores.
 
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CamHostage

Member
Limited space probably.

Right, the PlayStation Portal is a rather terrible device for this type of feature; it has no expandable storage option and the little bit of flash memory it has is for the system and services. You'd basically be sacrificing the future of the device's feature set (albeit I'd imagine the run system is not near maxing the 6GB available) and terminating official support just so that you could load a few ROMs through an awkward injector transfer once in a while.

The screen and the controller would ultimately be nice to use if you actually got this hack set up, but then, so would an Odin or Anbernic device or a Steam Deck or Logitech G Cloud or jailbroken Switch... and then you'd be able to do a hell of a lot more with it.

Alternately, getting Moonlight hacked onto Portable would be a more congruent use of the device's abilities and you could get way more than PSP games to show up on the Portal that way.

...This was a cute hack, but it seems kind of senseless to consider buying PS Portal on the expectation that hackers might make it as capable as you imagined before buying it and actually using it.
 
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Kindjal

Member
Classic example of very smart people being extremely dumb in other areas.

It's not about how fast Sony will patch it. Releasing it to the public means people will actually get to use it, albeit in a limited window of time and potentially reducing the functionality of the device in other ways (I assume you need to keep it updated to use the streaming feature).

Otherwise all of this has just been mental masturbation to show that it can be done. Who actually gives a fuck about that? People want something in their hands.

It's like me saying "look guys I cured cancer buuuut i'm not actually gonna release the cure - just showing I can do it!"

Fuck off.
We called people like that "Smart while in class, dumb during break".
 

Katatonic

Member
Missed opportunity to sell this not so popular product to more people.
Britney Spears What GIF
 

Embearded

Member
They didn't owe anything to the public or Sony. There is no right or wrong choice here and if reporting it makes them feel better, good for them.
 

ReBurn

Gold Member
This sounds like a "tell us the exploit or go to jail" situation.
Those situations don't really exist in the private sector unless you actually use the exploit to cause financial harm or otherwise break the law. I wouldn't be surprised if it came with a professional services pitch from Google to help Sony improve their security, though.
 

Perrott

Member
I think he wants to be officially acknowledge as a cunt.
You're talking about the man who pretty much singlehandedly gave us the PS Vita jailbreak as we know it today, as well as complete backwards compatibility with PSP and PS1 on it through Adrenaline, among many other things.

So, a cunt? Really?
 

StereoVsn

Gold Member
You can get emulation devices that run android for like 150-200 and just use the PlayStation app for streaming.
Oh, for sure. You can get a phone for like $100-150 and attach a controller just for the purpose.

What’s good about Portal is that it has fairly big screen and dual sense attached.
 

Saber

Gold Member
You're talking about the man who pretty much singlehandedly gave us the PS Vita jailbreak as we know it today, as well as complete backwards compatibility with PSP and PS1 on it through Adrenaline, among many other things.

So, a cunt? Really?

Yes.
He can by all means report the problems. But his comments and attitude just make him look like one(was it even necessary?). Making all these things you cited doesn't make a person less of a jerk.
 
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