Hackinformer Your device needs to transform, we are here to inform
Things seem to be progressing quite fast in the vita scene lately and after the obligatory but justified fake screams and rants, the piracy topic is now a thing. And to be honest, it was just a matter of time really since everything necessary was available and enough fresh AND talented blood joined the scene.
Team FreeK is the name of a new group that just surfaced with a proof of concept video about a full process of decrypting, dumping, patching and re-installing a legally bought game. Here is the PoC Video right away:
Okay, I always was against rumour-posts and personally hate this kind of news-blogging. Especially with a topic like this it is complicated but I think the people should actually know how things work and get a more or less technical explanation instead. So I will just do exactly that now..
How does it work
As you all should probably know now; HENkaku isn’t just a Homebrew Enabler but basically uses a full Kernel Exploit to take over the system to then lock things up again not allowing anything illegal intentionally. Of course as clever and honourable this idea is, it then is (as said before) just a matter of time until the pirates enter your ship..
From what the PoC video shows you can clearly see that the decrypting process is in fact the same method Team Major Gas released earlier. The cool things with Vitamin is that everything is automated and working quite well as it seems. Okay so nothing new yet and people were already doing that.
Now the only part were people officially seemed to actually have reached a dead end, is making the officially DRM signed eboot.bin files work with HENkaku. Now I can tell you the underground of course didn’t do nothing but wasn’t acting because of the reasons mentioned earlier. Instead more and more different sources came up with the same end result and as it seems that is exactly what was achieved here.. and Team Freek being the first party making this public in a userfriendly way.
In the video they claimed to have started on this about 4 weeks ago and it just makes sense. There is a lot of programing and testing involved since a lot different things are used in this. If there is more patching to the system needed or not is not clear yet but my guess is no and the created VPK files should work as is, which would make HENkaku more than a Homebrew enabler after all.
So in the end we can say: Yes, official EBOOTs can now be converted/patched to fakes selfs which makes them executable by HENkaku. 🙂
More?!
Yes, thats not all! In the Video you can also see a Hello World text running inside the dumped game. Now this is where the actually interesting part begins. At least for me..
As the text already says this is a simple plugin sample! Plugins and especially game plugins you might know from PSP days. One of the very first Homebrews were actually Plugins back then and lead to Cheat Devices and a lot more cool stuff.
Now that looks real…can't believe plugins are now possible. https://t.co/nPQsUNzHD9
— Andy Nguyen (@theflow0) August 27, 2016
So yes you can tell not only I myself am actually more excited by the Plugin PoC! Who knows where this leads to!!
Release?
As for a release they haven’t mentioned any specific date yet but since the app seems pretty much finished and aside from graphical tweaking there is nothing much more to do as it seems.
So it shouldn’t be long.. meet you guys in Tortuga. 😉
I do’t like the idea so much that the Vita can now play backups. I would’ve have been happy with homebrew and emulators since the Vita didn’t do as well as the PSP but at the same time I am happy to see the progress being made to hack it.
Hope this also leads to the system being completely cracked. I like making DRM free versions of my games, but I hope the system becomes completely open.
Trust that Sony made sure DRM was the hardest thing to crack in the system aside from the PSP emulation as most of our old HomeBrew came from that flaw, and both was to save their own butts from pirating, and the fact we have DRM decrypted means it’s already pretty much check, and finding a way to get EPSP, and PS1 games running through ISO’s will be the mate CFW will just be a way to gloat by the time we’re done the PS Vita will be as open as a book, and we’ll be able to do whatever our heart sees fit with it after all it’s a great Portable Console that can handle some years if we treat it right
Like it so much guys, especially for me who is from overseas and does not have access to games even thru psn.
it’s not forbidden to create an account to other psn (eu,us,jap)… so
You’re da man freakler thanks for the info
I’d rly hope someday the system will be so much open than i can run Linux on it, it will help very much in my work.