PS5 Flaw: $50,000 Bounty — and Shitstorm on X

TVS News AI, editorially supervised, presents PS5 Flaw: $50,000 Bounty — and Shitstorm on X.

On Wednesday, October 14, Sony transferred $50,000 to a security researcher who had reported a critical vulnerability in the PS5. The recipient: Jordy, listed on HackerOne as "2tonejordy," on X as @couldbeautism. It is only the second time in three years that a researcher has collected the maximum payout from the PlayStation Bug Bounty program.

What Sony pays — and what Jordy found

Sony has not disclosed technical details. What is clear: The vulnerability was classified as "critical" — the highest category on Sony's HackerOne channel. The scale officially ranges from $250 (for "low") to $50,000 (for "critical" on PS4 or PS5), roughly €220 to €44,600. The bug bounty program has been public since June 2020. Sony's failure to document the flaw is intentional: those who don't know which vulnerability was closed can't craft a new attack from the patch notes. This is the same line Sony takes with smaller finds — researchers rez0 and xssdoctor reportedly received $6,500 for another vulnerability, with the corresponding update quietly rolled out two days before the official announcement, according to Logic-Sunrise.

The shadow of TheFlow and the Linux plan

The fact that the $50,000 went specifically to Jordy has caused annoyance in the scene. The story has a predecessor: in early 2026, Andy Nguyen, known online as "theflow0" or TheFlow for short, had published a tool that could turn the PS5 into a Linux PC — but it only ran on the first PS5 model with firmware 3.xx to 6.02. Shortly after, Nguyen found a new vulnerability in the console's hypervisor — the part of the software supposed to prevent piracy and tampering. With it, his plan was to make the Linux tool run on significantly more consoles. The idea: wait for GTA 6, which is released on November 19, so players can still buy the game legally from the PlayStation Store — then release the updated Linux tool in 2027, including support for the PS5 Pro.

On September 15, Jordy then reported this hypervisor vulnerability to Sony via HackerOne. He later explained that TheFlow had asked him to hold back the find. He initially agreed — but dropped out when a third person discovered the same vulnerability and he risked losing the bounty to them. TheFlow subsequently publicly ended his work on the PS5 Linux project.

What the X community accuses Jordy of

Jordy himself celebrated the windfall with a joke on X: "At least I can buy GTA 6 with it." The joke didn't go over well. "50k in the account and 0 friends left. Was it worth it?", "Worse than selling crack" or "Imagine selling your soul for 50k" — these or similar are the reactions, garnished with hefty insults. One user put it bluntly: "Aren't you the guy who couldn't wait and only thought about the money?" Sony, incidentally, has not confirmed whether the $50,000 paid on October 14 was for Jordy's September report or for a different, previously undisclosed vulnerability.

What this means for your console

The flaw is likely part of the recent PS5 jailbreak wave, which allows unofficial software to be put on the console — such as a PS3 emulator. Sony therefore rolled out firmware 14.10 on October 1 and made it mandatory for signing into the PlayStation Network. According to data spotted by the account PlayStation Game Size in the PlayStation Store, 14.10 is also set to be required for GTA 6. The known jailbreak only works on firmware 7.00 to 13.60 anyway. So if you're still playing on an older version and want to run your own software on the PS5, you should know: the window of opportunity is closing.