The PS5 Is One Step Closer To Being Fully Jailbroken After ROM Keys Leak Online
Johnny Flores Jr. is a News Editor at TheGamer. He joined the team in 2024, and is focused on bringing the latest news to readers in a fun and easily digestible format. A graduate of the University of Southern California, Johnny owns a B.A. in Journalism and minor in Sports Media Studies. California born and raised, you can often find Johnny enjoying the sunshine and In-N-Out. When not gaming or writing news, Johnny can be found playing with his two male chihuahuas, Akira and August, whom he affectionately calls his sons.
We’re just one day into 2026, and perhaps no group is having a better start to their year than those who are part of the console modding scene, as a massive development involving the PlayStation 5 has just occurred, one that could pave the way for Sony’s flagship console to be fully jailbroken in the future.
As first reported by Tom’s Hardware, the PS5’s ROM keys have reportedly been leaked online, allowing anyone who has saved the keys to begin the process of attempting to access the console’s bootloader, paving the way to fully jailbreak the console.
That said, it does not mean a slew of jailbroken PS5 consoles will soon enter the marketplace, or that you, the consumer, can try and jailbreak it yourself. There are still a number of steps that need to happen, but the biggest, the ROM keys, is already underway.
What Makes The ROM Keys So Important?
To better understand the situation Sony and its PS5 find itself in, we turn to The Cyber Guru, who notes that ROM keys on their own are the “deepest, most protected” layer of the console’s architecture.
It cannot be patched with a firmware update.
When a console is powered on, it goes through a security concept called the “Chain of Trust,” in which the BootROM, which has a code that is burned onto the CPU during manufacturing, has been compromised, providing the potential to then decrypt the next steps and so on.
As is the case with piracy-related stories, TheGamer will not be linking to any posts or videos that may have the keys.
Previously, those in the hardware modding scene have been able to “jailbreak” their PS5 consoles via Kernel-level exploits that can easily be patched out via typical system updates and almost always are.
What happened overnight, per The Cyber Guru, is “akin to losing the master key to the bank vault, rather than just knowing how to pick the lock on the front door.”
In order for Sony to remedy the situation, it would have to manufacture new motherboards on all consoles moving forward. Not only is that a big ask at this stage of the console’s lifecycle, but given that there is an estimated 84-million-plus units sold and millions more on store shelves, all those existing consoles are permanently vulnerable.
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Right now, it’s safe to assume that those in the scene are using those keys to try and get to that next step. Whether that happens overnight or in several weeks remains to be seen.
To this point, no statement has been made by Sony, and it’s unclear if the company will acknowledge the situation.
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