Funny, I was just wondering if such an entity would not actually quite like the xbox and Playstation as targets. I mean, they are powerful machines, well connected to the internet and the ownership class by and large dont blink when they power them on and are told they need to download a system update or game patch. Feels like a fertile place to build a bot net?

I wonder if you really even need to hack the console. It might be easier to, say, subvert Rockstar's supply chain to put some code in the next GTA that spent a few cycles doing whatever botnets need to be doing.

Surely cheaper to mandate that microsoft ship the patch, if they wanted to do that.

Why going through the hassle when so many IoT devices are wide open?

not going to and publish it.

Tony Chen even addresses this directly in the video above.

They literally had a hard line in the sand. $600. If it costs more than $600 to hack it then they really don't care.

The other big thing is games being locked to a specific OS version, meaning some games require updates to play them. This has been key in their security strategy. It's basically pointless to hack it, it will be patched and you'll have to opt in to the patch to play anything new.

Another smart move by Microsoft was shipping Xboxes in an uninitialized state that has to connect to the internet and download the latest firmware before it can be used. Sony has been repeatedly burned by patching an exploit but having the vulnerable firmware still pre-installed on machines still in retail channels, so someone willing to abuse return policies can easily get one. MS doesn't need to worry about that, every new Xbox ends up on the latest firmware regardless of when it was manufactured.

PS5 and XS was attractive hack target for crypto mining when it was boom and GPU were in shortage. I wonder anyone had hacked it (and keep it secret) or hadn't.