The Xbox One was, on almost every front, a monumental failure. I could wax poetic about Don Mattrick’s abysmal showing at E3 2013 for hours, but the end result is all you need, as the PlayStation 4 outsold the Xbox One by two-to-one. However, Microsoft’s Xbox One did have at least one saving grace: it was, until now, considered “unhackable.”
That might sound like an exaggeration, but it’s true. While the PlayStation 4 was considered jailbroken by 2016, the Xbox One has remained invulnerable since its release on November 22, 2013. Well, that is until very recently, as Markus “Doom” Gaasedelen just showcased a newly discovered “Bliss” exploit at RE//verse 2026 (via Tom’s Hardware).
A few things about Gaasedelen’s discovery before we get into it: firstly, this only works on original Xbox One consoles, so the Xbox One S and Xbox One X systems remain impenetrable (for now). Secondly, good luck trying to pull this off, as it’s not exactly straightforward. As Gaasedelen showcases in the presentation, you’re going to need a microcontroller, which you’ll need to solder to the motherboard, and you’ll need to remove some capacitors from the motherboard to hit the right voltage.
Not quite as simple as just burning a Blu-Ray disc or plugging an Ethernet cable into your PS4, so the finicky nature of the exploit will probably put a lot of people off trying this out. Still, the fact that it’s possible at all is huge, and it’s a big deal for preservationists. Plus, this apparently isn’t something that Microsoft can patch out with a firmware update. But how did it take this long for someone to discover an exploit?
I’m not going to pretend to understand the intricacies of the Xbox One’s security, but Modern Vintage Gamer made an interesting point in his coverage of Gaasedelen’s discovery: the Xbox One Developer Mode subscription has allowed people to install apps and emulators on the system since 2016. Considering that most people would only want to jailbreak a system so that they could install emulators on it, the availability of this subscription likely killed the motivation to hack the Xbox One. That being said, the Bliss exploit does open up the Xbox One in a way that Xbox One Dev Mode never allowed, such as allowing for full decryption of games.
