It’s been a little more than a year since I demonstrated the first Vita running unsigned code, and it’s been dead silent since then. There is a lot of work on the PSP emulator but it’s been pretty quiet on the Vita front. In fact, there hasn’t even been any new userland exploits found (by me or others) for a year. I made a post a while ago saying that progress through hardware was one of the few options we haven’t looked extensively at, and the reason for that is because hardware hacking is an expensive endeavor. All this time I’ve been sitting and waiting for progress to be made by some unknown genius or some Chinese piracy company (sadly, for some scenes cough 3DS cough, this is the way devices get hacked since these companies have the money to do it); progress that would allow people like me to continue with the software work. Unfortunately, as of today, I have not heard of any ongoing work on Vita hardware hacking (PLEASE tell me if you are so we can collaborate). In fact, one of the simplest thing to do (hardware-wise), dumping the NAND, hasn’t been done (or publicly stated to be done) yet. Meanwhile, the PS4 has gotten its NAND dumped in a couple of weeks. Since nobody else seem to be serious about getting this device unlocked and poked at by hobbyists, I feel like it’s time for me to learn how to stop fearing and love the hardware. And I need your help.
Why hacking the Vita is hard (or: a history of first hacks)
It’s been about a year since I revealed the first userland Vita exploit and I still occasionally get messages asking “what happened” (not much) or “when can I play my downloaded games” (hopefully never) or “I want homebrew” (me too). While I don’t have anything new exploitwise (same problems as before: no open SDK, lack of interest in the development community, lack of time on my part), I do want to take the time and go over why it’s taking so long.
libVitaMTP & OpenCMA: Vita content management on Linux (and more)
More than a year ago, I’ve analyzed how the Vita communicates with the computer. I mentioned at the end that I started a project that will be an open source implementation of the protocol that the Vita uses. This protocol is just MTP (media transfer protocol) with some additional commands that I had to figure out. MTP is used by most Windows supported media players and cameras, so I was able to use a lot of existing code from libmtp and gphoto2. After lots of on and off work, I am happy to announce the first (beta) version of libVitaMTP and OpenCMA.
Huawei E587 (T-Mobile 4G Sonic Hotspot): Information and rooting
Earlier this year, I got my hands on the T-Mobile 4G Sonic Hotspot and as always, had to tear it apart as soon as I got it. I never wrote about it because I didn’t find anything overly interesting, but now it’s the end of the year, and I need to clear some inventory from my brain. If anyone remembers my post on the (older) T-Mobile 4G Hotspot (sans “Sonic”), the main limitation of that device was that the processor is an obscure one that required some digging to get information on. Thankfully, the Sonic variety is much easier to break into.
PlayStation Vita: the progress and the plan
Sorry that it’s been a while since I’ve said anything about the Vita. I was caught by surprise the last time of all the media attention from just a simple call for help. While I still don’t want to say too much right now, I do want to answer some common questions I’ve been getting and also go over what needs to be done.