Games

Fun fact, Nguyen is a family name

It's the most popular family name in Vietnam, 30-39%

This proves that ps portal is actually could be a capable handheld. Shame, it probably got enough processing power to run vita games. It has an adreno 610 gpu, which is much more powerful than vita's gpu.

This is normal MO for Alex, and follows computer ethics guidelines for someone attaching this stuff to his real identity. He's very active in this scene, especially in recent years with Sony hardware.

Also, keeping gaming devices on old firmware to wait is an incredibly normal requirement for cracks and homebrew stuff.

Sony has a pretty good bug bounty program. He'll usually report it to Sony, post something on social media telling people to hold off on updating firmware past the vulnerable level, and then it's up to Sony to fix what is a legitimate security issue. You wouldn't want a rogue developer hiding something in a game and turning your device into part of their botnet. Once Sony confirms it's a legitimate vulnerability, he gets paid the bounty, Sony patches the exploit, and the details of the vuln are released and homebrew tools follow shortly after.

Everyone is acting like if he didn't report it to Sony, and instead released it directly to the open internet, they'd somehow magically never know. That's complete and utter delusion.

The only time stuff like this hits the open net and doesn't get patched anyway is when devices are past the end of support, or if the vulnerability is so deep into the design or hardware that it can't be patched.

Wii exploits rely on issues with the physical chips themselves that can't be patched in software. Same with 3DS. PSPs rely on exploits in the recovery/factory mode/menu functionality, some of which was intentionally held back from release until after Sony stopped caring. I'm pretty sure the exploits with first gen Switches rely on a hardware flaw as well.

Point being, if you released this as a hacking tool first, Sony still patches it. The only thing you do is maybe delay their patch by a short few weeks, ruin any professional reputation connected to the identity used to release it, put yourself in the crosshairs of potentially life ruining legal trouble as they try to unmask your real identity, and miss out on a cool payout.

There's people who have been arrested for this shit for years and fined such crazy amounts of money that they will never pay it off. Stupid, but not worth the fucking risk when you can just do it this way.

haha I break ps portal haha here take the vulnerability don't sue me

I'm really confused by the guy's responses to people. Like he seems to think that it's somehow not possible to tell people before letting Sony know directly first or something? He then tells people that it's fine they just need to avoid updating their firmware, before discovering that it's impossible to avoid that when you first boot the device from factory...

"It's only a few weeks of difference!" he says when he of all people should know that's an age in the modding scene.

The Portal is such a weird device. I really don't understand why anyone would want one, but it's not like I'm the arbiter of what's useful and what's not

"Responsible reporting" is for security vulnerabilities... It's extremely hard for me to believe that jailbreaks like this should be considered security vulnerabilities, especially if it's something local-only or otherwise limited to something only the owner of the device would feasibly be able to do.

Does anyone believe the portable is actually a more secure device now than it was before this patch?

I'm not surprised. TheFloW has done this before with PS4/5 exploits . A lot of players don't update their firmware in the hopes they'll be able to run something like HEN.

Yeah, let's make sure all exploits are patched before the device inevitably becomes obsolete in a couple of years, so we can throw it away and buy the next version instead of not being wasteful.

Fuck Andy Nguyen.

In my culture that is considered a dick move.