PS Vita Hacker SKFU Confirms PlayStation Vita PKG AES Key Changed

Following up on his previous update, today PS Vita homebrew developer wololo has announced that the PS Vita Half Byte Loader (VHBL) will arrive shortly after March 1, 2012 with details below.

To quote: "This has been a tough week for lots of you, coming to my blog everyday to see that no new information was available about the release of VHBL. Trust me, it's been a much tougher week for me, making sure things go according to my humble plan, coping with a few more issues than expected, and overall, taking all the insults about "being a faker" or "trying to boost my ego" without being able to say anything else than "please trust me".

Ok, let's reveal a few essential things here, starting with the bad news: The game used by Teck4′s exploit is not available on the US vita store. Blame Sony and their "275 out of 900 PSP games available for your vita" scheme for this, not us. Part of the waiting time was to see if Sony would add this game to the US store at some point. It is obviously compatible since it is available in other continents, so my guess is that this is a marketing or a legal decision.

Long story short, people in the US who want to enjoy HBL on their vita, for now, will have to create a European (or HK, or JP,...) PSN account, buy a PSN card for that specific store (google for online shops that can sell you those and email you the code within a few minutes), and buy the game from there. A 20 euros card will cover for the price of the game as far as I know (Update: a 20 pounds card will be enough on the UK store).

This also means you'll have to "link" your vita to a European store every time you want to use HBL. Yes, it's super impractical, yes, it makes HBL even less likely to be interesting for you if you're in the US, but no, that clearly was not part of the plan. The game is, after all, available on the US PSN Store, just not for the vita.

I do not plan to wait even more until Sony adds the game to the US Vita store, since that could pretty well never happen, and is wasting everybody's time (people waiting for HBL in Asia have been waiting for this release for almost 3 months now, keep that in mind if you are one of the few who complained that you had to wait for a week). We waited a week for good measure, and saw that Sony is not adding PSP titles on a daily basis.

Waiting in hope for the game to be added to the US store is not the only reason that I "waited" for the release, but that's one of the reasons. Another reason is that there is a maintenance of the PSN, inconveniently scheduled on march 1st, that is, basically 2 days after I initially planned to publicly reveal the name of the game.

After discussing with a bunch of people, I've decided to wait until after the PSN maintenance to reveal the name of the game. Best case scenario, the game magically appears on the store and everybody's happy (I wouldn't dream about that), worst case scenario, the PSN update patches some of the vulnerabilities used for VHBL, and we're screwed. So we'll see...

I'm using the opportunity to remind everybody that HBL is only a PSP homebrew loader. The exploit and HBL do not give you any access to PSP isos, or vita isos, or the vita system, or anything like that. Even compatibility with PSP homebrews is limited, so basically you're better off getting a hacked PSP if playing homebrews is really what you want, and you're better off going elsewhere if piracy or pure vita hacking is what you're looking for. Basically, this hack is for those of us who want to be part of the "first step", however insignificant that step might be. Other people should not buy the game and then blame me for spending their money foolishly, the choice is entirely yours.

I'm just trying to cover my #ss here: don't go and buy a PSN PSP game for your vita if you're deeply expecting something useful out of this. You should buy the game first to play it, second, as a bonus, to get HBL to (maybe) work with it. Again, HBL has been confirmed to work by a few people already, but I cannot predict if Sony will do a magical trick to patch the game under our feet.

Unless something goes wrong, the name of the game will be publicly announced here on March 2nd, after the March 1st PSN maintenance (give me up to 24 hours, I'm not necessarily in the same timezone as you and I also have a real life). The files for VHBL itself will be available shortly after that."


More PlayStation 3 News...

Below is another update on how the PS Vita HBL release will happen from wololo via: wololo.net/wagic/2012/02/03/vita-hbl-how-the-release-will-happen/

To quote: As the release of the PS Vita in the US and the EU gets closer, I’m getting an increasing amount of requests from people about HBL on the vita. I did post a FAQ a few weeks ago, but people still seem to have questions. When will it be released? Will it allow to run PSP isos? Will it work with a demo like for the patapon 2 exploit? Does it support this or that homebrew? etc…

Let me try to answer some of these questions, with more up-to-date answers.

First of all, the easy ones: VHBL (that’s the super new cool name of HBL on the Vita, I’ll let you guess what the V means, I know, I’m super original) will not support loading PSP isos. Basically VHBL will have the same limitations and features as HBL on the PSP, and, last time I checked, running psp isos was not possible through HBL.

The same HBL limitations apply to compatible homebrews. In a general way, user mode homebrews should work for the most part, while homebrews that require kernel access will not work. For now (but that could change), homebrews requiring network access might not work (or at least, the network part of them will not work).

Like in the patapon exploit era, it is possible, depending on the success of VHBL, that we progressively increase compatibility if we (as a community) keep improving the HBL code in the weeks following the release. Oh, and I am talking about PSP homebrews, running in HBL within the PSP emulator. So, for now, don’t dream about a full speed N64 or psp2 emulator. What we’ll get are the PSP homebrews that you already know.

Second, the vulnerability we rely on to run VHBL is a vulnerability in a PSP full Game, not a Demo. This means you will have to buy that game on the PSN in order to run VHBL (just like in the good old days of GTA:LCS for the first eLoader on the PSP). This also means that as soon as we reveal the name of that game, Sony can probably remove it from the PSN and/or patch it.

This leads to the most asked question: when and how will this be released? Well, I have a basic idea on how the release will happen. Nothing spectacular but it should hopefully be enough to guarantee that people who are really motivated in getting their hands on HBL on their Vita will get it. I’m hoping that constantly reminding people that this doesn’t allow the to run any pirated content will attract the right people to this exploit, and not the 95% of pirates that define any console hacking scene these days

In the past weeks I’ve been polishing the release process, and I can’t predict the future, but hopefully it will go well.

Nevertheless, getting access to this exploit for you guys will be a matter of being at the right place, at the right time.

For now I’m thinking Sony’s reaction wil be to remove the game from the PSN within 24h of the public announcement. Worst case scenario, Sony is already aware of the vulnerability and have already patched the game. This is unfortunately not something I can test without getting any more guinea pigs... these guinea pigs will basically be you when the release happens, I can’t really do any better than that.

Obviously, the release will not happen like your typical hack release (a dramatic article on every news site of the planet copying the hacker’s initial blog post). It will be, I expect, a bit more subtle than that.

Anyways, I added a page (wololo.net/wagic/vhbl/) on this blog where the VHBL downloads will be available, so if you’re waiting for HBL on your Vita, just check that page (and our /talk forums - wololo.net/talk/) regularly for updates.

I'm getting one as early as I can to get a low firmware model, provided it isn't too high.

Meh, it's going to be a game of cat and mouse as usual. They're going to constantly tighten their draconian grip around the throats of their customers while more exploits to free the hardware keep getting released, an endless cycle like always.

As I said before I'm not even considering buying one until it's cracked wide open and until there are Micro SD to whatever-it's-proprietary-nonsense-is-called adapters. There will be for sure, just as there were 2 Micro SD to Pro Duo adapters.

I wouldn't be surprised if the US launch saw an even later firmware (1.6?). Hopefully the scene for Vita stays motivated and finds some reliable homebrew.