A new VHBL exploit by Acid_Snake
This week, /talk member Acid_Snake (creator of pyMenu for VHBL) managed to get VHBL to run on his exploit on the US and EU versions of an undisclosed PSP Game (TheCobra’s latest addition to VHBL helped us in getting the EU version to run by the way).
Acid_Snake has already done some early testing, and homebrew compatibility is fairly good, although, as usual, a few “big” homebrews such as ScummVM or snes9xTYL are missing the fun. (See details in Acid_Snake’s thread)
If you’ve been counting, that’s now the 4th undisclosed VHBL port available:
- Related read: New exploit and VHBL port in the works by Xerpi
- Related read: Neur0n gets VHBL to run with a new exploit on the Vita
- Related read: VHBL 4th release: work in progress
Some of you might think that’s enough for us to do one release before 1.80, but as far as I know for now there is no change of plans: the next VHBL release, based on neur0n’s exploit, will happen after firmware 1.80 is released.
As a few people mentioned in the blog comments, yes, there is a risk Sony majorly patches VHBL in 1.80, like this risk existed in 1.61, 1.65, 1.67, and 1.69. However so far their strategy has been to remove the games from the store as fast as possible, patch the firmware, then put the game back on store once the firmware is updated. I believe this is a cost-effective way to mitigate the impact of VHBL and I am not sure they will change their strategy for now (anyway they should really be focusing on the Vita side rather than the psp side IMO). The risk is here, but we are taking it, as we assume it is more costly for Sony to “strongly” patch VHBL, than to let us play homebrews with VHBL once in a while.
So what will happen with these 4 ports of VHBL? I don’t know yet, this will depend what their owners want to do with it, but for now we’d rather assume they’ll all be useful sometime in the future.
Speaking of the amount of exploits, I counted again today, and I am now aware of 16 exploitable games on the psp that haven’t been disclosed yet. Some of these games are not available on the vita, and some of these games cannot host a port of VHBL (or at least, not one that would work in a satisfactory way), but some of them haven’t been fully tested yet.
Also, if you add the amount of games that have been exploited in the past on the psp, brings the total to about 30 psp games found to be exploitable so far with simple buffer overflows. As jigsaw mentioned a while ago, I would not be surprised if most psp games are exploitable one way or another through savegame hacks, given enough time…
- Related read: 10 Great PSP Games with a vulnerability
Anyway, the number of exploitable games found so far is just a funny anecdote I wanted to share. Until the next VHBL release, enjoy a few screenshots of Acid_Snake’s VHBL port:
Source: Acid_Snake on /talk
awsome ill wait for the 1.80 fw to vhbl
Wow already? that means 4 chances for VHBL. Let’s just hope that I already have the game this time lol
What about Australian PS Store?
Thanks!
Im 80% sure that we are included in the EU store, since we are the PAL region, which is Europe. This is how Games are done (PAL, NTSC, NTSC-J) so Im pretty sure its the same 🙂
(Im in Australia too :P)
Hehehe I’m not ozy, I’m just livin in NSW 🙂
LONG LIVE VHBL xD
I can’t believe. 4 exploits! Sony should be scared!
hey there wololo is it possible, if you can make some sort of program were we could use the ps3 controller or the arcade stick on the ps vita?
some one has already done it…
http://www.pcworld.com/article/250998/hack_an_arcade_fighting_stick_for_your_playstation_vita.html
i dont think the method is released..
http://imaginglabo.web.fc2.com/DSC07029.jpg
from this image.. i’m sure it’s DevKit Version of PSVita =_=
awesome work guys
I really am enjoyin your frequent posts Wololo.
My thanks to the people who find the time to go and find exploits for VHBL. 🙂
im not waitin on wololo anymore im waiting on sony
That’s really funny that there are so many exploitable games. On the other hand, it’s impossible to make a program which will have no errors (especially those parts of program which should be under full control of itself for reading and writing, like save files, so it’s rare to implement data validation there).
This is true. In particular on the PSP, all security relied on the encryption of the savegames, which was “hacked” years ago. It is sad however that no game developers seem to have any idea on how to control input/output in their games. Most exploits here are extremely basic. Note that I won’t blame them, if Wagic was an official game, it would be exploitable in many many ways.
Any idea when Super Collapse 3 will return to the PSN store?
Probably when 1.69 become a compulsory update, or when 1.80 is released
immer noch warten -.-
wegsten bessere chance auf eins von den spielen 😀
wololo, i recently purchased a $24 nich psp title(US/available from the vita psn) would it be possible for you to also check if vhbl will be compatible for that game? is there a section here for these kind of requests? i am also willing to share the said account. thanks and sorry if this was not the place for this
we don’t take request like that. wololo posted a lot of nice tutorial of how to check if a game is exploitable and how to import vhbl to it. if you at least the game to crash with control to $ra. I am sure there a lot of developers willing to help you get vhbl to it if its possible ( some games are missing to many useful functions that are needed for vhbl). if you need names of developers to contact when you get this far… there wololo,wth, and even me(thecobra) I already help at least 3-5 more people to get there version to work with vhbl( some found in PSP only and other found in both) don’t Ask who I help or what game name they exploit because I won’t answer until they decided themselves to answer. just know I am willing to help on my spare time 😉
wololo@ I am glad my addition to the project helped in a future release. I looking at the save data function swell to see if I can fix that as well 😉
guys 4 exploits and all are being held off? Throw us a bone for the ones who don’t care about ps1 support and release one now please.
We released 3 versions of vhbl already. If you didn’t catch any of the 3 previous “bones”, how can i trust that you will catch the 4th one?
LOL, you’re very philosophical Wololo! 🙂
You guys are awesome. I recently got a Vita…a couple games and the thing is already collecting some dust. I truly believe I’de put more time into it with emulators than the new games I have. nothing like killing 20 minutes on Mario wrather than 45 on MLB the Show. I am eagerly anticipating the release and am most thankful for all of your hard work. Keep on kickin ***.
did anyone honestly buy the vita just to be able to run VHBL?…why are we acting like its the only thing that matters to owning one?…i love my vita the way it is, and VHBL would just be icing on the cake…unfortunately, ive missed the previous 3 “bones”, but i am grateful that there was even bones to be thrown and will try again to get my teeth into the next release…if that doesnt happen, then i go back to playing video games and wait for the next…if i really need to relieve a homebrew itch, i just fire up the old psp and have at it…most of you probly got rid of your paperweights, but i wont ever get rid of mine until i can do everything on the vita that i can do with my psp…chill out bros, good things come to those who wait…did you ever write letters to santa clause stating that he was taking too long and you demand your gifts right now?…no?…then why is it happeneing here?…Wololo=Santa, VHBL=gift…many thanks to santa and his elves for their continued hard work in bringing joy to all the little boys and girls of the world…i appreciate it greatly, even if i cant enjoy it yet. KIU
I find it ironic that Sony takes out the game that works for VHBL, updates the firmware, and puts the game back. I’m not sure how this is “cost-effective” because, afaik, people pay Sony for the games…
Sony seems to be pretty tight on patching up homebrews on the vita, but since it’s only using the psp emulator inside the vita are they afraid that someone could go off that kernel and fully hack the vita? Sony ain’t losing any money on homebrews vhbl would allow it to run cause sony didn’t create them, sorry if that sounds stupid just adding my 2 cents
hey wololo could you possible find exploits in the vita and psp demos that are currently on the vita store so that we can get the exploitable game quickly and easily without having to pay for the game. cheers!
You can do it yourself by following the guides here: http://wololo.net/hacking-portal/
cheers!
How do people actually find these exploits in the PSP games? I understand that people might not want to go too much into detail on it, but i’m wondering more about in broader terms. Like, do people just randomly try one (or several) method on every PSP game?
mostly one main method( but there are a lot of other way) which is buffer overflow. wiki can explain what that is and the link wololo provided can help you try one.
I just saw that link after i posted 🙂 Thanks for answer 🙂
@Yes: this is absolutely not a secret and has been relatively well documented for a long time. Check this tutorial:
http://wololo.net/2009/03/11/finding-gamesaves-exploits-on-the-psp/
I just saw your link after i asked the question actually 🙂 I forgot to write a follow-up comment on it that i noticed it. Thanks for the link! 🙂
man 4 games. Knowing my luck I’ll not be able to go buy any of them before they get removed from the store. -sighs-
The vhbl is awesome but I’m curious about how it’s going removing the guantanimo bay program the vita runs on. Not that I’d expect details of any kind, more like a thumbs up, half, or thumbs down. For the life of me I don’t know why sega I mean sony went out of their way to make it the most un user friendly tablet wanna be on the market it just makes no sense to me. Powerhouse gaming device don’t get me wrong, can’t wait for future titles and definitely some homebrew games. Thanks to all the hard working devs, I know you guys pour a lot into your efforts.
Mario Kart, Super Smash Bros., Earthbound AND Poke’mon Yellow on the Vita? Goodbye boring bus rides home and hello Elite Four
I’m so pleased that the Vita is getting attention from you guys 😀 I’m still waiting to be able to launch and play psp iso and cso files on it though 🙁 Just gotta play the waiting game since I unfortunately cannot program >< Does anyone know of any psploaders for homebrew being "in the works"?
Thanks for your hard work Wololo!
Seems like Hackers and such care more about the Vita than sony does
All sony has done was Youtube (WOW, sarcasm detected) and numerous updates to patch exploits…
Dear sony if you put out the top notch games on this system then maybe people would be more hesistant to wanna go to homebrew cause then they’d have a game on your system that they’d actually wanna play 😉
I’m gonna go out on a limb here and say that we’ll have 1.80 by the end of the week because if history repeats itself psn under maintanence means an update is right around the corner. Psn is down for maintanence now but it’s only a guess so yeah… Not much else i can say
wololo, ya que tu tienes un tutorial para encontrar exploits, me imagino que es probable que en sony lo estan aprovechando para encontrar exploits y taparlos, que dices tu? saludos.
Hey, I don’t speak Spanish, but I think what you ask is the following : “Since I provide a tutorial on how to find game exploits, isn’t it likely that sony will use this tutorial against us in order to patch this technique?”
Well my answer is simple: The tutorial has been online for more than 3 years. If Sony could/wanted to do anything about it, they would have done it a long time ago.
Hey wololo, What he said was “Since you provided a tutorial to find exploits, that he imagines that sony is using it to find game exploit and patching them, What do you say?”
You answer the question but just wanted to clarified what he said ;).
gogo@ Como dijo wololo, Sony tienes mucho tiempo para usa el metido que wololo publico. Mas de tres ano. Si ello quirien atrapa esto exploit, eyo lo aria acer tiempo. Ello prefere no gata tiempo en esto 🙂
Es una perdida de tiempo por parte de Sony, ellos prefieren que lo encontremos nosotros y asi ahorran dinero.
Awesome work but still i have nothing jajaja i was too late last time to get them and the game in USA is not on store im talking about Motorstorm and super collapse 3.Now i have to wait until october.
I was thinking about buying a PSP Vita for the VHBL brew. I have been reading a lot of information about emulators and programs that will work. The ones i would mostly care about would be SNES, Genesis, what about an arcade emulator is there one for the Vita? Love my dungeons and dragons arcade games. Biggest question I have, with this VHBL, can you play downloaded psp games on your Vita? By this i mean downloading games like you do on a hacked psp.
Also i am currently in China studying abroad, if I buy a psp here, will i have trouble running VHBL? Thanks for the info^.^
i have the funds on the playstation wallet ready
haha i know right same here
Hey wololo do you have plans to mame? it will be awesome to get it work,most of the puzzle games are in mame not to mention Double Dragon,Kof,Rage Of The Dragon,Punisher,Sunsetriders and many,many others.
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