Hacker Helped Sony Fix PlayStation Portal Issue

For those who might not know what the PlayStation Portal is, it is a streaming device that only allows players to stream from their PS5 to their handheld Portal through what is called Remote Play.

While many are confused about why exactly this product exists, it allows players to hop up from their seated area and play away from the TV, which could benefit those who want to play in the backyard, on the front porch, or in other areas. Some have even tested out playing it further away from home, but that isn’t always successful, depending on the distance.

With that being said, Andy Nguyen who is a Google engineer, and his team hacked a PlayStation Portal in order to help run some PSP (PlayStation Portable) games in offline mode. This person has now said that they have helped Sony fix the exploit. What happened was they hacked the device and used an emulator to play the PSP games offline. 

After these events, the PlayStation Portal received a new firmware update that gave the device its 2.06 update. This is when Nguyen tweeted that the update contained the fix for the hack. 

“We responsibly reported the issues to PlayStation, bugs are fixed on 2.06,” Nguyen said in his tweet.

To give a little more backstory, Nguyen was originally known for making and providing jailbreak hacks for PS Vita and showcasing and exposing PS4 vulnerabilities. He now works as a cloud vulnerability researcher for Google.

Sadly enough, Nguyen has actually received some negative comments since, instead of releasing this exploit to the public, he chose to help Sony fix it. He then stated that if he had done that, all that would have happened is Sony would still have fixed the issue, and then he’d be in the wrong, while instead, Nguyen decided to report it.

He stated the following: “No idea why you folks cry about the disclosure. If we just released it to the public, do you think Sony would just leave it unpatched? Reporting vs not reporting is only a few weeks of difference.

The PlayStation Portal was first released on November 15, 2023, and was priced at $199, which isn’t bad for a cloud-streaming handheld console. For example, the Logitech G Cloud, which performs the same way as the PlayStation Portal, cost $350 when it was released, which is a big jump. We will keep you updated with any other updates on the PlayStation Portal.