SKFU launches a fund raising operation to hack the vita
Famous PS3/Vita developer SKFU just announced on his blog that he is running a donation drive to get a Vita development kit. Those “kits”, if my understanding is correct, contain a debug device (a special version of the Vita that can run unsigned code), as well as afull SDK and documentation. In the case of the PSP, access to those kits helped dramatically to hack the device, according to SKFU.
They are fairly expensive though (2000 euros), and since SKFU says he has no intent to actually use the kit for anything else than helping the scene, he is asking for the community’s financial contribution to the project. He has also plans (that are kept under wraps due to the legal risk for his contact who will be acquiring the development kit) to give access to that devkit to a number of trusted devs, in order to make fast progress on vita hacking.
So what do you guys think? Are we touching the gray area of hacking here, or is it a fair way to access more knowledge about the Vita? Either way, feel free to donate to SKFU for his project, by checking his blog post here.
ive been reading alot about this cev kit since march-april of last year sony saying this kit is signifily lower priced than the other consoles dev kits and that they encourage “garage devs” to make games, do u really think sony will make this dev kit fully exploitable for the low price of $2000, i mean im sure they are confident in there security mabey thier dev kis are fairly limited also, like limited cpu speed ..like the playstation suite
..and as inexploitable i mean easy to readhow the vita works,mabey the kit uses some kind of sandbox emu and will be useless to skfu and other devs making this donation a waste of time and money
For me, I just want to use any home-brew apps that all. I do not care it can play pirate games or not however if it can be true that would be the greatest thing.
The vita will most likely need a dongle :*-(
You know what, given the strange form factor of some of the I/O (usb connection, etc…) of the vita, I am thinking that yes, service mode on the vita is probably accessed by leveraging some of the unused pins in there…
k That would be cool if we can somehow inject code using the USB port using the proprietary USB cord, kind of like cut the end off…well u get it (kind of like the cobra dongle;)
Blah that’ll never work lol
So we’re gonna donate to SKFU only to have him tell us he won’t be releasing any of his hacks once he gets his dev Vita? LMAO!
How’s the progress going with the fund raiser wololo, how much has been raised so far?
325 Euros out of 2000 Euros. I wish i could give more.
@Wololo
You should add me on MSN zack6925(@)gmail(dot)com.
I’ve got a slight gift to give you if you still play PS3/and now that you’ve updated your VITA ( to everyone else I know this is off topic to the thread but I figured it’d be worth mentioning).
Wololo, I’m sure you’ll enjoy this but I can’t talk about it in public.
ooo, im intrigued a bit… Deadly have you decided to donate the rest of the funds to get the dev kit? just curious.
@auron,
In recent light of the contact with the “anonymous” dev (tony) as wololo called him.
I feel that I should wait to see what comes of his release or wololo’s testing of his exploitation…
Due to the fact SKFU doesn’t seem experienced and we’re not allowed to know the facts behind which developer’s and or hackers he’ll be sharing the devkit with.
Not to mention their skills and things they’ve done in the past also he still hasn’t addressed any concern I’ve posted here.
Which makes me tend to think he’s really just sitting around waiting to rack up money no longer reading forums/blogs and just blowing everyone off with it.
I don’t want the excuse “That’s because he’s too busy hacking the VITA” it’s more over if you’re not a scene player enough to read around to see if someone has jumped the gun before you or made progress.
Then you’re not in the game at all…
There’s a slight chance that if he doesn’t have the funds by the begging of next month I might do it because that’s when my next hefty paycheck comes.
But until then I’ve got a kid on the way, going to be moving out of where I’m living and I’m best off to save the money.
Things would be a bit different if he was even able to show the slightest progress hacking the VITA as is but he hasn’t managed to do more then code PC apps which are relatively easy to do.
So my question to ask you all is if he can’t even make slight progress in hacking the retail VITA what is he going to do with a devkit if it’s protected as well?
Yes it allows him to run unsigned code, yes he’ll be able to code his own apps because of such.
The real question here is though, Will he have access to the kernel? That’s a maybe.
What would it take even if he had access to the kernel?
Well he’d have to find an exploit of sorts and even in doing so hope the devkit kernel/OS isn’t too much differed from the retail because if so it may be impossible if not hard as heck to port it to a retail version.
And btw most devkit kernels are different from retail versions starting with offsets and going into functionality…
Such as the fact they’ll have backround services like a debugger running.
Now if someone like Wololo was to ask for funds towards a devkit and proved he’d found some crash in the retail vita covering suddle details which would allow sony to figure out how it was done.
I’d be on it like a dog on a bone funding the project 100% due to the fact that in order to re-simulate that crash and to know what exactly is going on behind the doors then a devkit would be necessary ( for debugging purposes ).
Other then that SKFU is just asking for one with not very many details provided about what his intentions are other then “research” and *attempting* to hack the vita.
Which in the end might just turn out bad for everyone who’s donated to the project when you get something such as “Sony updated and the bypass for the software license that expires has stopped working meaning useless devkit”.
Or even “I wasn’t able to find anything” after a few days to a month ( Which may mean he spent the money and never bought one )
Or worst of all claims he has an exploit and says he doesn’t want to release it due to the community constantly nagging at him or him not wanting to get sued by sony or blah blah blah the *** goes on.
At this point and time it just seems like a risk I’m not willing to take and I think in light of the comments above others would agree with me on this.
Any news on how much has been raised or did everyone just give up , I do feel like something fishy here skfu doesn’t say much
He has a counter on his page, he’s up to about 20% now
I wonder where is he gonna buy it?