PS4 Playground - Easily Hack / Exploit A 1.76 PS4 From Settings > User Guide

Discussion in 'Playstation 4 Guides' started by InsaneNutter, Jul 10, 2016.

  1. InsaneNutter

    InsaneNutter Resident Nutter Staff Member

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    Why exploit the PS4 from Settings > User Guide?

    The current hacks / exploits for the PlayStation 4 (PS4) use the web browser, however on the PS4 you can’t use the web browser without been signed in to the PSN. The problem here is to sign in to the PSN you have to update your PS4. So you might be wondering what you can do?

    This is where Settings > User Guide comes in very handy. The PS4 User Guide found under the Settings menu is actually just a web page, this mean's using some DNS trickery you can make the PS4 load any webpage of your choice, instead of the User Guide.

    In this tutorial I will show you how to make the User Guide load the PS4 Playground, which is currently capable booting Linux on your PS4.

    You have two options on how to proceed here, the easy way, or the harder way:
    • Easy Option - You are relying on someone else to host a DNS server that redirects manuals.playstation.net to a website hosting the PS4 Playground.
    • Harder option - You use your router to redirect manuals.playstation.net to your own webserver hosting the PS4 Playground. The advantage of this is that you are in total control, however this does require some networking and server setup knowledge which is beyond the scope of this guide to teach you.

    If you are unsure the easy option is more than good enough to get started with PS4 hacking.

    Easy Option:

    On the PS4 go to Settings > Network > Setup Internet Connection >

    Choose either:
    • Use WiFi
    • Use a Lan cable

    Then for "How do you want to setup the internet connection" choose "Custom"

    ps4-dns-hack-1.jpg

    On IP Address Settings choose "Automatic"

    ps4-dns-hack-2.jpg

    For DHCP Host Name choose "Do Not Specify"

    ps4-dns-hack-3.jpg

    Now for DNS Settings Choose "Manual"

    ps4-dns-hack-4.jpg

    Enter 89.108.88.221 as the primary DNS Server

    ps4-dns-hack-5.jpg

    MTU Settings should be left on "Automatic"

    ps4-dns-hack-6.jpg

    Select "Do not use" for the Proxy Server.

    ps4-dns-hack-7.jpg

    That's it, you can then test the internet connection and exit back to the settings menu

    ps4-dns-hack-8.jpg

    When you go to Settings > User Guide the PS4 Playground should now load

    ps4-dns-hack-9.jpg

    You are ready to start exploiting your PS4 now!


    Harder Option - Redirect manuals.playstation.net to the PS4 Playground on your own router:


    How you go about doing this will vary depending on your home router, chances are you will not easily be able to do this on a lot of home routers, especially cheap ones provided by your ISP. However if not then the easy alternative i provided above will be fine, this is simply provided for the more technical users, with advanced setups, who might want to setup a totally offline solution.

    Because of the many 1000's of potential different home network setup's it's impossible to provide a step by step tutorial from start to finish for this harder option, however the hints provided should be enough for more technical users to learn enough about how I created my own setup.

    Host Override For manuals.playstation.net:

    On your router you want to create a "Host Override" for manuals.playstation.net, redirecting manuals.playstation.net to a web server hosting the PS4 Playground.

    For this you are welcome to use my mirror of the PS4 Playground to test with, this is hosted on the IP address 178.32.55.197

    Here is the host override setup on my pfSense powered router:

    Host: manuals
    Domain: playstation.net
    IP: 178.32.55.197 (This is the IP of the web server on my local network hosting the PS4 Playground)

    ps4-host-overrides.jpg

    Now when any device on my network visits manuals.playstation.net, the PS4 Playground is loaded:

    ps4-host-overrides-2.jpg

    Presuming the above works iff you want to keep everything the PS4 is accessing within your local network, you now need to setup a webserver on local network.

    Once your web server is setup add manuals.playstation.net as a website you are hosting. You can then host the PS4 Playground locally, simply using your router to redirect manuals.playstation.net to the IP address of the web server on your local network.

    The PS4 Playground files for self hosting can be downloaded from GitHub you would copy these in to your wwwroot folder for manuals.playstation.net on your local web server.

    Different language settings on the PS4 make the User Manual load a different page, so I simply have 404 errors on my own webserver redirect to the PS4 Playground html files. On my setup I simply have 404 errors redirect to PS4-playground which is a public URL I have my PS4 Playground mirror accessible at.

    For my router i'm using pfSense running in a Virtual Machine. You can use Zpanel in a Virtual Machine to easily set a webserver up.

    I hope that gives you a good idea about how to go about hosting a PS4 exploit setup at home.
     

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