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Earlier today, Yifan Lu, a well-known member of the Vita hacking scene famous for the Rejuvenate hack for the Dev Assistants, has announced that a new (native!) Vita homebrew enabler for the latest firmware version, as of writing (3.60), will be arriving tomorrow at "9:00AM UTC".

The new hack, known as "HENKaku", will require the following:

• A Vita/PSTV running 3.60
• A memcard with at least 10MB of free space (internal memory is currently not supported!)
• An FTP client
• An internet connection**

**Offline support is now available! Launch the exploit straight from the email app without the need for internet access at all! See the unofficial release thread for more details. (Internet connection still required for installation)


This is a small paragraph of Yifan Lu himself explaining what the properties of this new homebrew enabler does:

HENkaku simply lets you install homebrew as bubbles in LiveArea. It is a native hack that disables the filesystem sandbox. It installs molecularShell, a fork of VitaShell that lets you access the memory card over FTP and install homebrew packages (which we create as VPK files). With vita-toolchain, developers have access to the same system features licensed developers have access to as well as undocumented features that licensed developers cannot use (including overclocking the processors).

The hack has been released at http://henkaku.me ~ Furthermore, the hack is said to be exclusive to 3.60, and there is to be no backports for the time being.

Source: http://yifan.lu/2016/07/28/henkaku-vita-homebrew-for-everyone/

 

[Deleted User]

Calm your tits

Well I'm not mad as such. Just very concerned, as I do not want to see the scene quickly disperse once again due to massive lack of knowledge on things still...

 

[FR0ZN]

The prize he was talking about is probably the kernel exploit inside HENkaku which you then can abuse to your liking.

 

[Deleted-355425]

Well I'm not mad as such. Just very concerned, as I do not want to see the scene quickly disperse once again due to massive lack of knowledge on things still...

They have just made it very hard to be used for piracy and want to see if they did a good job by watching most fail to break it down lol.

 

[Duo8]

Well I'm not mad as such. Just very concerned, as I do not want to see the scene quickly disperse once again due to massive lack of knowledge on things still...

You got pretty much everything you need for HB now. So if people really are interested they won't really have a problem with it.

Henkaku could use some marketing, ninjhax style though.

 

[metroid maniac]

The prize he was talking about is probably the kernel exploit inside HENkaku which you then can abuse to your liking.

There's a kernel exploit?

I guess it's something heavily obfuscated that's just used in the installation process, then.

 

[Alex79uk]

This is awesome, I'm incredibly grateful to the guys who worked this out. I can't help thinking it's going to be quite short lived though. PSN and PS+ and remote play etc are such an integral part of my Vita usage as soon as Sony patch it out I'll be stuck with having to update or I won't be able to access any of my PS+ games or remote play will I? Maybe I need to get a cheap second Vita just for homebrew...

 

[Deleted User]

The prize he was talking about is probably the kernel exploit inside HENkaku which you then can abuse to your liking.

But then wouldn't it be leaked by the guy who got the prize? Surely the team can't be that evil to just give 1 person a kernel exploit for the Vita...

You got pretty much everything you need for HB now. So if people really are interested they won't really have a problem with it.

Henkaku could use some marketing, ninjhax style though.

Problem is, I would like to do some work around the vs0: partition. (Yes, before you tell me it's dangerous I am 100% sure of what I am doing.) And vs0: is write-protected, so that would mean having to use something that can bypass that restriction.

 

[FR0ZN]

There's a kernel exploit?

I guess it's something heavily obfuscated that's just used in the installation process, then.

I'm not 100% sure if it actaully is a kernel exploit ... but it looks to me like one ... I don't know the software levels of the vita but I guess it's the same like PS3? (lv0 (bootldr) -> lv1 (hypervisor) -> lv2 (kernel) -> userspace). So they gain userspace access through exploiting the web browser and from there trigger a kernel exploit, which gives you access to everything. You can read/write to all known partitions. That's something Rejuvenate couldn't do, because it was running in userspace if I'm not mistaken.

But then wouldn't it be leaked by the guy who got the prize? Surely the team can't be that evil to just give 1 person a kernel exploit for the Vita...

That's up to the person who reverses it, if he wants to share the exploit good for us ... if not, the next guy probably will.
My best bet currently is that Sony will first fix it and then Team Molecule will say fuck it and document it.

 

[dkabot]

Where do you see an USB port on your regular vita again?... Yeah I thought so... lol

According to yifan and some hidden calls, the accessory port is actually a USB host.
If any devs were interested, they might be able to find the call and use it.

Presuming accessories were intended to be used by devs, a normal application may be able to enable it...

Well people, it seems that Yifan and the rest of Team Molecule are now "challenging" some users to reverse-engineer the hack. And the first person to be able to R.E. it will apparently win "a big prize", according to Yifan himself...

Ladies and gentlemen, speaking from a personal perspective, if I was ever to successfully deobfuscate and R.E. this exploit myself, I swear to god I would just turn it down and shove whatever that prize is back in their faces, because it's "competitions" like this that drive the scene to die, honestly...

Reasons why I feel that way:
1) Prizes and money do not motivate hackers. The whole point of an exploit is to develop it for free and with good heart for the community. (Although I'm starting to think some of these hackers are beginning to become a lot more moody and aggravated in the community for some reason, not being able to share valuable information which would otherwise enhance the scene even further...)

2) It simply wastes time. Honestly, no people ever want to endlessly wait months on end for more information and higher-access exploits to arrive simply because "Oh, they didn't look into it themselves, soooo... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯"...

3) There are very little people whatsoever that would both have the brain power and interest to put aside a few days to look into this. It would be too tiresome, and there are extremely better options than letting people struggle with this.

4) Speaking of better options, why could they have not just cut out the middleman and release the exploit source immediately in this case? The 3DS scene did this during the time of <=10.7 exploits and it still took a good few weeks (or months even?) for Nintendo to push a new firmware version to the system that patches it.
And look at the Wii U! They took almost the same time to patch out the exploit after the release of the OSDriver exploit. (And they don't seem to be patching anything after the GX2 Exploit either!)


Tl;dr, there is a massive fine line between letting users hopelessly 'dig' for the exploit source and find the info themselves, and sharing important, useful information with the scene, with a good heart for the said scene, that will save ample-time and advance the scene even further quicker... that is just something I don't understand about the main console hackers of today.

Please Yifan (or any other knowledgable Vita hacker that could possibly be reading this), for the love of god, don't let this scene go the way of the Wii U hacking scene!

The point is that the scene has basically nobody to it already.

1. Someone who has some skill may be interested in a clear cut task with a clear cut goal; they aren't looking into something doomed to have no answer.
2. Yifan has explicitly stated they won't go "sucks to be you" if nobody finds it, but they are trying to get new people in.
3. If you accept that nobody else will work on anything, you're basically accepting that the scene is already completely dead.
4. The 3DS already had a good set of people ready and willing to jump in on stuff starting on roughly Pasta, and it only expanded from there. No comparison.

Tl;dr, there is a massive line between letting a scene stay dead while just releasing something outright (which I'd presume would go the way of WiiU and be just piracy, if it goes anywhere at all), and getting new people into the scene with a task that is known to have a solution.

 

[retrofan_k]

Are we able to play PS1 games with this?

Not yet

 

[Deleted member 370671]

But then wouldn't it be leaked by the guy who got the prize? Surely the team can't be that evil to just give 1 person a kernel exploit for the Vita...

What if the prize is something even better / more powerful than this kernel exploit (keys? boot exploit? full documentation on how the system works?)?

 

[Sonic Angel Knight]

The only thing that should motivate modders or hackers is themself. No prize, bounty, or others. just themself. Doesn't matter if there money, prizes or some super useful thing involved. You do it cause you want to. Doing things others are challenging is just playing into their trap.

 

[Romsstar]

What if the prize is something even better / more powerful than this kernel exploit (keys? boot exploit? full documentation on how the system works?)?

What if the price is the knowledge und understanding that henkaku is actually NOT a kernel exploit?

 

[yifan_lu]

I'm so glad everyone here is an expert in social theory, the psyche of the hacker mind, metaethics, and clairvoyance. I am hoping to read everyone's dissertation on what I'm doing, what I'm going to do, how wrong it is, and how it will affect humanity as a whole.

 

[Deleted-355425]

prize may be a picture of some pressed hams

 

[Deleted-355425]

I knew it! it WAS a pressed ham! RE is so fucking easy.

 

[jDSX]

Is there any chance of this getting a PSN spoofer because I don't want to loose my account or get banned from downloading my paid games or buying them.

 

[yifan_lu]

"Why tinker with the plain truth that we hurry the consoles to their graves in order to play all the games we want without worrying about paying? Wolves don’t sit in their caves, concocting crapulous theories of piracy to justify devouring a flock of sheep!"

I may not have remembered the quote right...

 

[Scarlet]

The latest nightly of mGBA seems to be fairly good by the way. Grabbing a few more games to test now ♪

Edit: And as a bonus, it's the first thing I've downloaded that actually has an icon and background for the Vita menu!

Edit2: Harvest Moon loads and plays well, but it completely froze the app to try and load Mystery Dungeon Red ;-;

 

[Columbo2811]

Do .prx files only work if we have kernal. Can't run the latest psp cps1/cps2 builds with vhbl on 3.60 as there's an error. The older versions of these emulators run but compatabilty is a lot lower.