The PS5 hacking scene just took a big leap forward

Ars Technica reports that the PS5 hacking scene has taken a significant step forward with the release of Relapse, an exploit that works on any PS5 running firmware 13.6 or earlier. That pushes jailbreak compatibility well beyond the older, narrow firmware windows that previously limited experimentation to a shrinking pool of consoles.

The timing matters: firmware 14.00.00 arrived in mid-September, so any PS5 last updated before then is now potentially in scope. Relapse chains from a long-known WebKit bug in the console’s browser into kernel write access, then installs an ELF loader to make arbitrary code execution much easier to manage.

The other big improvement is speed. Earlier PS5 jailbreak paths could take up to 50 minutes per attempt and still hang the system, which made practical testing painful. Relapse is described as far more efficient, which should lower the friction for researchers and hobbyists exploring the platform.

For game developers, this is mostly a security and platform-control story, but it also reinforces how much attack surface can hide in browser components and kernel-facing code. If you ship on locked-down hardware, the lesson is familiar: exploit chains often become useful only when they’re reliable, fast, and broad enough to reach real users.