Sony Blunder Cracks PlayStation Classic Wide Open To Run Games Off USB Drive

The Sony PlayStation Classic has been selling well since it debuted thus month, and we have already seen the device gutted to find it runs a quad-core ARM processor and has 16GB of storage inside. More recently we learned that the PS Classic has a secret emulation menu, but you need the right USB keyboard to access it. Now word has surfaced that the device has some serious flaws in its security that made the console easy for hackers to crack to run additional games off a USB drive.

The blunder Sony made with securing the console was found by console hackers when dumping the PS Classic system code onto an external machine. What they found was that Sony hid the key needed to decrypt the most sensitive pars of the device software on the device itself. Once that was discovered the hackers were off to the races cracking the machine open to allow it to run games from any platform. Hacker Yifan Lu was able to use his skills to get Crash Bandicoot running via a USB thumb drive.

The PS Classic reportedly doesn't check the software it is running. An open-source tool called BleemSync is available that makes the cracking process easy to do at home; it's available on GitHub. The tool isn't exactly automated, however; the user does have to create some folders and files along with some database editing that could potentially brick your PS Classic. But the hack is reportedly easy enough that most can do it without issue.

With everything set up, users can sideload pretty much any PlayStation game they want. Hackers are certainly working on getting the PS Classic to run newer games and other emulators. Some have noted that you can already do most of this with a PC, but the appeal to some retro gamers of a small device ready to connect to your TV with controllers is undeniable to many. Sony can't be happy that the console was cracked so quickly and it would be no surprise to see it try and lock the console down via future hardware revisions.