Cobra Black Fin dongle announces the beginning of Piracy on the PS Vita for December
Well… as much as I hate proprietary dongles, I must say this is some interesting piece of news.
A new website was recently created, announcing the arrival of the Cobra Black Fin, a dongle to play isos on the PS Vita.
What’s intriguing about the Black fin is how it’s going to work: the Black Fin relies on p2p sharing of the games in order to work. In order to play a specific iso, you’ll need someone, somewhere, to have the original game cartridge inserted into the “Black Fin reader” connected to their PC. It probably does not matter who that person is, or where they are, what matters is that when you attempt to play an iso, the PS Vita will try to authenticate the cartridge, which will trigger a signal on the black fin card (inserted into your vita) to look for an original cartridge somewhere on its network (the cartridge connected to some guy’s PC), and communicate with that original cartridge for authentication. One’ll still need the iso on their SD card, and the original cartridge will only need be needed for the authentication steps, I assume.
According to their marketing description, this is so that you can share games with your restricted circle of friends. Practically, I’m convinced their global p2p network will ensure you can play whatever game is on the network, and everyone on the net will be “your friend”.
Like it or not, it sounds like a very clever and out-of-the-box idea. From a technical perspective, this is brilliant.
From a usefulness perspective, however, it assumes people will play nice and share games on their end. Maybe the Cobra Black Fin network will work a bit like torrents, letting you play games only if you share some of yours. There’s also the risk this could die if it does not gather momentum: if many people buy and use the product, Black Fin have built themselves a huge network of p2p piracy. But if only a few hundred people get it, it will die as soon as it appeared.
Long term too, this is most likely not a viable product: as less people use it, less and less games will be available on the network.
Nevertheless, from the technical approach, I can’t help but think this is a pretty brilliant idea. Nobody likes DRM piracy dongles, but you have to admit the idea is ingenious. How does the black fin card contact its p2p network in the first place? That assumes they have ways to run some level of unsigned code, and I’d be interested to understand how this works.
Such a system makes the Vita 3G much more interesting for pirates, all of a sudden. You’ll need network access in order to play the isos.
We’ve known for a while that hackers know how to dump vita cartridges (therefore acquiring the isos will probably not be a problem for people using that system) and how to run the isos, with some limitations. It is possible this dongle announcement will force some hackers out of the woods, to provide the scene with free piracy mechanisms, just like we’ve seen on the 3DS scene.
We have yet to confirm if this is true or some advanced hoax, but it does look legit. The dongle is announced to hit retailers by the end of the month.
The Full Press release:
The Black Fin allows Vita and Vita Slim Wifi and 3G users to share their Vita games over the internet.
The Cobra Black Fin Emulator card stores game ISO’s on Micro SD and the Black Fin Card is then inserted into the Vita/Vita Slim console
When connected to the Black Fin servers authentication of the Vita game is performed by matching the ISO on your Micro SD card to the same original game running on a peers’ Black Fin reader connected to his PC and the Black Fin servers or friends’ servers.
You might ask why it is necessary to authenticate the game you wish to play using an original card connected to a server?
Vita has a very secure card authentication mechanism, which to date has not been penetrated and is based on secure cryptography. It is unlikely that a direct authentication method which avoids having to use a peer to peer system will appear any time soon. As a result Cobra has designed a unique and cutting edge peer to peer sharing device which allows users to share their favourite games with friends over an internet network.
Vast resources have been poured into designing a flash card which is the same size as the original Vita card itself. Yes, the Cobra Black Fin squeezes all of its technology into a card no bigger than a Vita game card with tons of features and packing serious hardware power! When you look at the circuit board design and components used you start to understand the expertise and time required to pull off a design of this magnitude.
Expect release of the Cobra BlackFin end of December 2015..
Resellers can reserve their stocks in advance by e-mailing: sales@cobra-blackfin.com
Initial batch is sure to sell out fast, so be sure to reserve your stocks in advance to avoid disappointment.
Stay tuned for more information and further picture and video presentations.
Source: Cobra Black Fin, via PlaystationHax
I’ve started a discussion here: http://wololo.net/talk/viewtopic.php?f=54&t=45093
“How does the black fin card contact its p2p network in the first place? That assumes they have ways to run some level of unsigned code, and I’d be interested to understand how this works.” No. They do not have any exploits, or else they wouldn’t require this. The gamecart uses standard SDIO protocol for communications (I think with custom drm additions by either sony or sandisk). Likely how it works, is that the challenge from the vita is sent across the p2p network to whoever owns the same and it communicates with the cart across the network until the vita sees that it’s verified. Then the cart switches to its internal storage for the actual reading of the game (although technically it would be possible to stream it from your computer if you want to be tethered).
“Such a system makes the Vita 3G much more interesting for pirates, all of a sudden. You’ll need network access in order to play the isos.” You won’t be able to do this with the vita’s 3g connection. You need a laptop with internet connection with you when you want to play games.
How do you know you’ll need a laptop with internet connection? Why not just 3G? The computer seems like it’s involved for hosting games, not accessing them. Unless I missed something here. I only did just read this particular article, so I could be missing more information.
…..because of the dongle
Could this not be defeated pretty easily by Sony tightening up the challenge-response timings when a card is accepted? I imagine that a real card will respond to the challenge request much faster than one using this device, due to the overhead from network connectivity, the hardware itself, etc.
p2p… this sounds dangerous.
Not so sure but I heard Nintendo bans people using flash cart to games online by checking headers or something like that? If lots of people using the same header (= same cart) then BAN.
Could Sony do the same thing? Since PSP’s UMD Passport can check if a disc has been used for getting discount or not.
So, if Sony could find dozens of Vita around the world are using the same cart at the same time, I guess Sony will BAN console, account, or even the game cart?
Then some unlucky gamer buy that banned game cart (cheap used game) from gamestop or ebay, and get banned because of that game…
A better question would be once its authenticated could you insert your own code, I.e replace the iso
I’d imagine that each ROM would have its own unique authentication challenge
First!!!
This looks like it could be somewhat interesting, and it will be great to play games like PSO2 if you don’t want to import or use a Japanese PSN account (I imported my copy). I might get one of these down the line if I feel the need for one.
If I wanted to pirate, I’d still not like the idea of having to plug in some black box (or fin) into my PC from a company that supports piracy – while it might work like they describe it could still also work as a keylogger – and what’s bad as well is that Sony might be given the ability to locate users of this network as it’s p2p – same issue as with torrents and so on.
Personally I’m not interested, no need for piracy here, but the unsigned code part is interesting.
It’s a dongle. Say it! Nobody will think you’re *** for typing dongle. 🙂
What a funny idea. Birlliant yes. I don’t hink I will use this someday for it can be usefull in a lan party or where many people shares their games.
Not really interesting
What about PSP games, is there an UMD reader?
There’s no UMD reader on the Vita, so this isn’t for that
Nope. You couldn’t do that with this piece of hardware if the game hasn’t been ported onto a Vita cartridge officially already.
But there are eCFWs and some other tricks do play backups of PSP-games.
This one also doesn’t work with games that are PSN-only.
It was a joke.
Jokes are funny…
F*** FINALLY!
And Wololo said we most likely wouldn’t get Christmas hacks this year.
Well, if this takes off, the PS Vita is officially dead. Thanks, Cobra. :\
Vitas already dead
If it were dead, stores wouldn’t keep getting stock in, people would stop buying, and sony would stop publishing games for it.
Sony has stopped publishing games for it…..
Take a look at any non-gaming retail store. You are lucky to find more than one or two (or usually any) Vita games yet they still carry the system (usually the old Borderlands bundle that they can’t get rid of). Compare this to the 3DS or PSP — or any gaming unit for that matter — and you will see how close to death the Vita is. 🙁
I have gotten most of the games I want in physical versions but having to delete any tether to my PS3 everytime I want to swap games (Plus game release time especially) sucks so the micro SD part of the kit is just as exciting for me. I would buy it just for that if it is affordable. Hopefully someone clones it without the dongle and blows it wide open!
The truth hath spoken!
My local store still has the first stock of Vita’s from launch day in 2012… piracy might be a good thing for Sony to blame further failure of the Vita on even though the Vita doesn’t need help failing.
When someone can figure out a way to run Rejuvenate without a daily check in would be a god send for the Vita.
This honestly gives me a reason to get a vita now. R.I.P. Flashed Xbox days :((((
Absolutely, piracy totally killed the DS, the 3DS, the New 3DS, and oh all those other systems…
Stop being so dramatic. Piracy doesn’t kill systems. Only their idiot creators do and Sony effectively killed the Vita after year 2 when it only supported indie development which was more about porting existing titles than creating new titles.
The Vita has been dead for quite a while now.
LOL, is it Christmas already? Cause i did not expect this to come out this soon!!! Finally ill be able to rip my 30 sum ps vita games to 1 micro sd card so i can finally say good bye to the days i have to carry a pouch full of games!!
I’m not so sure how I feel towards it. It is impressive, Ill give’m that, but you can’t look at it as if its not a really well disguised piracy. Lets face it, if they could have created a dungle that runs iso without the need of p2p, they would have. They dont care *** about this “share games with your friends” ideology, and so won’t the end users. Im glad wololo.net decided to go with this accurate title for this article.
Still, I wonder if sony can block this easily, or if hackers can gain something out of it.
I don’t like to have turned on my pc everyday( I pay bills xD)
buy your games for expensive prices or pay a little for the electric to power your pc…..hmm hard choice
Cobra junk isn’t cheap, so there’s that cost. Depending on how efficient your PC is it isn’t a trivial amount of power. Worst yet, the main reason I support piracy is access to media you’ve purchased through any reasonable means. Relying on a network of pirates to keep their cards in and requiring online access to play on a portable system amounts to a bunch of nothing. It’s a glorified renting service then. To pirate.
It’s madness and you’re far better off paying “expensive” prices on legitimate media so at least you can keep your media and access it any time because this also doesn’t resolve the digital games. Which are the biggest threat from being pulled/downed by Sony at any time should they fold.
This is basically the worst method and excuse for piracy.
This looks fishy. Why wouldn’t they host the carts themselves? This looks like just a way to get access to people’s computers and files. I’d avoid it, but I’ve got enough sense not to hook up random Chinese junk to my PC
First ?
Anyways, hope this leads to a much more open and progressive cfw hack to play isos.
meh..
as you said, hope this one falls into obscurity quickly and make devs do a free CFW solution..
one can dump and run your carts, like the 3ds today..
they made this because CFW is still impossible, for now
Fake for sure as fake the ps4 kernel exploit
My friends haven’t ps vitas!
Aren’t these ROMs?
first ,wow-just-wow unreal jump for vita gaming
First?
Piracy Rangers!!! assemble NOW!!!
don’t like the idea at all, it seem to fishy and you must be connected and to be honest i never liked the idea of pirating ps vita games, to be more accurate i only wanted to play some dc games on my vita lol, but not this ***.
First!
This sounds like a resonable idea ,but I think Hackinformer tweeted, that the webiste of the creators is fake and the “dongle” too.Anyway I’ll look formward to the further development in this case.
You know, when the 3ds was launched, people raved over it’s unstoppable security.
Here with the vita, the security is so crazy we have to do the weirdest stuff to even partially circumvent it.
hmn this looks… interesting to say the least. as much as i want to jump on this boat i do wonder if waiting is the best option? i bought the cobra dongle, ps3 jailbreak and several other peripherals and after enough time passed they were all released publicly or at least what they were capable of was. I think i’ll watch how this unfolds before i commit to anything
It’s Impractical, but a good start.
I don’t like this idea. And the fact that you need to be connected to the internet for this to work is also generally not something i particularly enjoy….on top of that, what if im on the go? my PS Vita cant really connect to the internet all the time and it doesnt even recognize my mobile phone tethering (its one of the oldest models so yeah). I think it’s honestly not worth and this may end up dying soon. But hey, at least we can finally find a way to play ps vita isos, so good job on the team who finally made playing ISOs a reality for the PS Vita. But honestly, the real achievement is when we can use CFW to play ISOs instead of relying on P2P sharing to do this
Does this enable us to easily rip games without a Vita? Using their fin shaped reader?
So you need to buy something to use it? Good.
Less people using it, the better.
Black-Fin apk would be nice , use hotspot to tether to smartphone, let the app only use it to contact P2P, maybe with mutual ratio of “activations” and Also stream the app data from the phone storage. Now that would be nice.
Finally! Been waiting for something like this for a long time, glad its coming!
would be a must buy if there where any new games worth getting it for lol
so many ppl on here so picky, if u dont like to stay connected to the net to play games then just buy the damn things, stop moaning about every single thing, no pleasing kids these days
How much is this projected to cost?
FIRST!!!! reeally hopes this leads to a vita softmod even tho the vita has no games I would pick one up to go with a ps4 remote play and iso
Couldn’t the company just have every vita game ever made loaded on a black fin server somewhere so everyone can use their product? its so simple a cave man could do it
And then there would be a game they don’t have and you’d say.. “oh, if only it was a p2p model so people can share their copies”
Not too interesting, really. All it does is enable piracy in a way that can easily be tracked. This doesn’t seem to open any doors for emulation and other neat stuff, like trophy disabling cheat programs.
Just looks like a good way for people to get their PSN accounts banned.
Yay for pirates, killing something that doesn’t have much already #overkill
If developers stop producing games b/c of hack ***, then good job playing “god” like they wanted to be.