PS4 Mod Menus Are Back and Sony's Manifest Has Not Moved

Mod menus are back in Grand Theft Auto Online public lobbies on PlayStation 4, following a jailbreak for system software 13.52. The widely repeated line that Sony has since patched the problem, because the network now requires firmware 14.00, is not supported by the file Sony's own consoles read to decide what firmware they need. This desk fetched that file directly from Sony's update host, in all three regional variants, and read its contents out in full. The forced update floor it publishes is still 13.520.000. That is the same build the jailbreak targets. This article prints the manifest verbatim, states exactly what this desk can and cannot conclude from it, and flags a date error in the source that started the patched claim. What the report says The claim originates with a widely shared post from a Grand Theft Auto community account, dated 2026-09-20T12:42:16Z and carrying 7,217 likes at the time this desk read it. Verbatim: A jailbreak for PS4 firmware 13.52 was released recently, and Sony is still letting consoles on 13.52 pass PSN auth. This has allowed cheaters on jailbroken PS4s to go online in #GTAOnline with mod menus. So beware of public lobbies. Twenty-nine minutes later the same account added context on Sony's usual behaviour, verbatim: Sony tends to cut off PSN access for the previous firmware within a week or two of a new firmware release, and asks security researchers to wait until then before disclosing exploits. Someone may have disclosed or leaked this one early, thus Sony may act sooner than usual. Nobody on this desk observed a lobby, a mod menu, a money drop or a ban. The cheating itself is secondhand from that post and from one outlet's write-up of it. That limit sits at the top of this article rather than the bottom, because everything else here is about what can be checked and this part cannot be. Sony's update manifest, read in full CONFIRMED. PlayStation 4 consoles fetch their update instructions from a plain HTTP endpoint. This desk's editor fetched the United States manifest at fus01.ps4.update.playstation.net/update/ps4/list/us/ps4-updatelist.xml at 2026-09-24T20:07:42Z: HTTP 200, content-type: application/xml, content-length 910, last-modified: Wed, 16 Sep 2026 02:50:40 GMT, etag: "cc5d5c51502a717583a3746765d45988:1789527040.313625". The forced update block reads, verbatim: <force_update><system level0_system_ex_version="0" level0_system_version="13.520.000" level1_system_ex_version="0" level1_system_version="13.520.000"/></force_update> And the published system package reads, verbatim: <system_pup ex_version="0" label="14.00" sdk_version="14.008.001" version="14.008.000"> The package it points at sits on an image path dated 2026_0831 and measures 503,331,328 bytes. Two numbers therefore live in one 910 byte file. The newest firmware Sony publishes is 14.00. The floor Sony forces consoles up to is 13.520.000. Those are not the same number, and 13.520.000 is exactly the build the jailbreak targets. The same answer in three regions CONFIRMED. The European and Japanese manifests were fetched as well. Every value that matters is identical across all three: level0_system_version="13.520.000", level1_system_version="13.520.000", label="14.00", version="14.008.000". The European and Japanese files carry last-modified: Wed, 16 Sep 2026 02:50:39 GMT, one second earlier than the United States file. Converting the ETag's own unix field is this desk's own arithmetic: 1789527040 is 2026-09-16T02:50:40Z, matching the United States file's Last-Modified header to the second. Measuring the age of that file at the editor's fetch is also this desk's own arithmetic: 8 days, 17 hours and 17 minutes without a change. The community post warning about the lobbies came 4 days, 9 hours and 51 minutes after the manifest was last modified, and the file has not moved since. What the manifest does and does not prove Here is the reasoning, laid out so a reader can disagree with it. Sony does not document what force_update means in operational terms. The reading this desk applies is that it names the minimum build a console will be pushed to, and therefore serves as a proxy for the oldest build the network still deals with. On that reading, a Sony that had cut 13.52 off its network would have raised the floor above 13.520.000, and it has not. That reading is this desk's inference and it is labelled as such. It is entirely possible that Sony gates network authentication somewhere else, invisibly to this file, and that the floor is a separate mechanism with a separate schedule. What the file establishes on its own is narrower: the published forced update floor is still 13.520.000, it has been unchanged since 16 September 2026, and it is identical in three regions. It does not establish that jailbroken consoles are authenticating today, and this article does not say that it does. What the file does rule out is the specific claim being repeated. If the patched claim rests on the network requiring firmware 14.00, then the manifest is the wrong evidence for it, because the manifest still forces only 13.520.000. A date error in the source The outlet whose update line propagated the patched claim published it, verbatim, as: UPDATE: 22nd October – Sony have now patched this as PSN requires firmware version 14.00 to go online. That same article's own machine-readable dateModified field is 2026-09-22T07:46:54Z. The month in the visible copy is wrong by one. The update was made on 22 September, not 22 October, and 22 October 2026 had not happened when the line was written. This desk notes the error rather than repeating it, and reads the update as a 22 September addition. Method, and what was not touched The endpoint used above is the plain HTTP one that PlayStation 4 consoles themselves query. The HTTPS variant of that host presents a certificate chain this desk's trust bundle does not cover. No TLS verification was disabled anywhere in this check. Every request was an unauthenticated GET of a public file, and nothing was downloaded from the console update package itself. This desk did not reach the jailbreak release, any Sony statement, or any Rockstar statement. No platform holder has commented on the record that this desk could find. What a player should do about it The practical advice is unchanged from every previous wave of this problem. Money dropped into an account by a stranger in a public lobby is a liability rather than a gift, and Rockstar's own history of acting against recipients rather than only against the person dropping is long and well documented. Avoiding public sessions on last-generation hardware is a reasonable precaution while this is unresolved. The Grand Theft Auto VI angle is a staffing one rather than a technical one. Rockstar has been hiring against precisely this problem class, which this desk has tracked in the anti-cheat hiring in Bengaluru and in the PlayStation 4 title id datamine. With 56 days to launch by this desk's own arithmetic, the last-generation platform that is still carrying Grand Theft Auto Online is the one with a live jailbreak on it, and the file that would show a fix has not changed in over eight days.