It appears that PlayStation 4 users might need to quickly go tweak their system settings, due to a newly uncovered "hack" in the form of corrupted private messages. Hundreds of users have reported that upon receiving a weird message in their PS4's message inbox, their consoles would freeze up, and not do anything, requiring a full factory reset in order to function again. This glitch can happen to anyone that allows messages from "everybody", so it's highly recommended that for now, you should set messages to friends only. Those unlucky enough to experience the problem find that upon getting the message, their system won't connect to their controller, and if they try to force the system to go back to the menu, it'll still crash when signing into their account. Sony hasn't said anything in regards to the matter at this time.

Even deleting the message from the mobile app doesn’t work. It happened to me during Rainbow Six: Siege. A player from the other team used a dummy account to send the message and crashed my entire team. We all have had to factory reset. Only one of our guys wasn’t affected and he has his messages private. Do this ASAP to prevent this from happening to you.

This just happened to me during Rocket League. Got a message then after a minute my controller stopped working and everything went silent. Now I can’t access the home menu. It just goes to the ‘Report Problem’ screen every time

You can protect yourself from such problems if you go to settings, account management, privacy settings, and then personal info/messaging.

Source

 

[Itzumi]

Yikes! Sony better be on fixing this!

 

[Sonic Angel Knight]

Already did. I been getting spam bots long time ago.

 

[Itzumi]

Already did. I been getting spam bots long time ago.

Wait, there's spambots and stuff on ps4?

 

[Sonic Angel Knight]

Wait, there's spambots and stuff on ps4?

I guess so, I get random messages and when I respond, it's never based on what i say, is always like some pre recorded phone message from customer service.

It's skype all over again with those things.

 

[Deleted member 397813]

so, its the new

effective.

Power
لُلُصّبُلُلصّبُررً ॣ ॣh ॣ ॣ
冗

 

[BlueFox gui]

haxor: ur pee ass fo is DED

 

[Itzumi]

I guess so, I get random messages and when I respond, it's never based on what i say, is always like some pre recorded phone message from customer service.

It's skype all over again with those things.

Eww god, prerecorded messages.

 

[Deleted member 397813]

haxor: ur pee ass fo is DED

HAXOR no do gud thing. y, no1 knos

 

[Rabbid4240]

Remember when this glitch happened in Tony Hawk's Underground 2 and it pretty much killed the entire fanbase.

 

[kuwanger]

So, how long until spam bots unlock everyone's console?

 

[Itzumi]

Remember when this glitch happened in Tony Hawk's Underground 2 and it pretty much killed the entire fanbase.

I heard about that. That's horrible

 

[Deleted User]

Sounds fake.Untill i see evidence of this bricking someones console i dont think this is really happening,atleast not to a majority of people.

 

[Vieela]

Sounds fake.Untill i see evidence of this bricking someones console i dont think this is really happening,atleast not to a majority of people.

There has been quite a lot of people saying it has been happening to them. It happens by chance, someone has to send them the message. It doesn't "brick" the system per se, but leaves it pretty much unoperational, since it always will load the messag and crash over and over. It's not fake.

 

[Deleted User]

But on boxing day, when Sony told me an unauthorized charge originated from my console's serial number, they said that it's impossible for PS4s to be hacked.

 

[johnbus]

This sort of thing has to stop. Companies need to be more mindful of the dangers of Unicode or go back to ASCII. There have already been attacks against iPhone users and such, but for whatever reason, companies don't seem to account for the handful of users that will spam Unicode until they find something to wreak havoc on the devices of others.

This is rapidly becoming the phreaking of it's time. Although, instead of needing a complex series of beeps to get free long distance, any script kiddie can copy and paste symbols or strings to deny or damage the devices of others.

 

[Rabbid4240]

I heard about that. That's horrible

Now all we need is to add a messaging system to undertale.

 

[Vieela]

It's crazy how common and easy to pull off attacks using unicode stuff to be fairly honest. Every single year there's at the very least 3 or so of these kind of attacks and they just get progressively worst. Android, iOS, Whatsapp, everything is extremely vulnerable to something that it's of extremely easy access and exploitation. It still gets me by surprise how such big bussinesses like Sony let such exploit pass through them, seeing it's something that is quite easy to pull off ("easy"). Hope this gets patched out soon and doesn't get to other plataforms.

 

[AbyssalMonkey]

This sort of thing has to stop. Companies need to be more mindful of the dangers of Unicode or go back to ASCII. There have already been attacks against iPhone users and such, but for whatever reason, companies don't seem to account for the handful of users that will spam Unicode until they find something to wreak havoc on the devices of others.

This is rapidly becoming the phreaking of it's time. Although, instead of needing a complex series of beeps to get free long distance, any script kiddie can copy and paste symbols or strings to deny or damage the devices of others.

I mean, or, and this is a big OR, they could just sanitize their services. This is like databasing 101. Never perform operations on text without proper sanitization and this would never become an issue in the first place.

 

[guily6669]

Yeah, it's so stupid that this kind of things still happen with just random messages...