It’s official, the Cobra Black-Fin (Vita piracy dongle) is real, and it’s back… soon (c)
It seems the latest rumors about the blackfin resurfacing may have been more than rumors. The Cobra Blackfin team have updated their website today, announcing that the Cobra Blackfin is ready (both on the hardware and software front), and currently being sent to some websites for reviews.
I have emailed the Cobra Blackfin team to get a sample and will let you know if they send me one (Hey, we’re the biggest Vita underground community, it would be weird if I don’t get one, right? Right?)
The new announce on the Cobra Blackfin comes with documentation and the necessary software to run the device.
As explained before, the Blackfin is a game “sharing” device that lets you share games you own with your “friends”. Technically, you insert up to 6 legit games in your Cobra device, plug that to your internet-connected PC, and the games are ready to be shared for anyone who wants it.
The documentation hints at a possibility to have the games shared on your own local network, which might allow you to actually share games with only a circle of close friends (something that might be more legally acceptable than sharing it on the Cobra public server).
The Cobra Blackfin manual basically confirms everything we thought about the device and how it will work. You will be sharing your original games online and those will be used at the “authentication” process by other gamers who will only need a “backup” of the game. The Blackfin also ships with all the hardware and software required to dump the cartridges.
Cobra Black fin not compatible with firmware 3.60
Perhaps the most surprising thing of today’s announce is that Cobra Blackfin is not currently compatible with firmware 3.60. The Blackfin team advises people to stay on 3.57 or lower for now, but promise they are working on 3.60 compatibility.
A veteran hardware console hacker, whose name I’ll keep anonymous at this point, has confirmed to me the Blackfin is 100% real, but also told me he’d expect Sony to block it within a week of launch. Ouch.
Source: Cobra blackfin site
A week? From the 3.57 requirement, it seems that Sony has already blocked it. Considering 3.60 was launched in April, it took Sony -1 months to block this.
Well played 🙂
It aint out yet and it’s already a failure.
Just like the vita…
Worthless unless it allows you to play any and all vita games at anytime, and is also region free
Region free: Vita games are region free, so that’s not an actual issue
Play all games: this will be highly dependent on how many people are sharing.
Digital (including PSN only) games are out of the question.
With the thing already being blocked on the current firmware it’s dead on arrival even without looking at the price (which also kills its peer-to-peer based functionality).
One can buy like 10 used games carts for its price and be able to play them anytime, anywhere.
I can only see one usage case for this: someone who never owned a Vita buys it for the first time with the intention to play Japanese cart-based games they would have to import otherwise. All the other possibilities are less practical than buying used games on the carts, especially combined with a second hand Vita.
***.
sony will block it soon,and after the team grabs your money,they leave the scene.
still wait for real hack,and not some chip hack of jews group that try make money.
If you read the article it said that it’s already blocked…
Ah, lovely, the anti-Semitic comments never seize.
You insult a group that is at least trying to do something….why don’t you try and so something for the community then instead of insulting people that can do what you can’t
Personally I don’t think a group trying to enable piracy is doing something for the community at all.
true but in a sense it could boost the popularity of the vita, and it needs that badly
It may bring a few more sales for the Vita itself, but it will hardly increase the popularity of the device, because of the requirement to stay below 3.60 or the latest firmware if they manage to circumvent the block introduced in 3.60. This thing has no future.
“Haim”
You seem pretty anti-semite for a guy with a Jewish name.
Racist ***.
As I’ve been writing since the first day I read about it, the real value will be a good hacker doing a teardown of the hardware and finding what can be used all in software. Similar to how you used to need a Gateway card for the 3DS but now it’s all achievable in CFW. Could be pivotal in getting Vita games loading from those expensive little memory cards, or finding a way to mount micro SD cards in a Vita gamecart size converter. I still don’t think there’s enough interest in the scene for any of that to happen, but it would be nice.
Ikr? Let’s pray some hardware hacker get to ticker this cobra black fin and do try to make the scene come back to life.
They may not know the internal wizzardry that the cart does in order to authenticate your launch. They merely created a proxy system so you can launch your backup while being auth with a real cart located somewhere else.
How $ony patched it? Probably checking the timestamp between asking the cart and getting the answer. Network delays are biiiiiiiig….
If it can be spread across the wire, it can be copied … period. The cart is one thing, but I think the network stuff will be the first to see progress … and then the cart … and then a micro sd capable cart. I don’t think there will be much .
Any of you guys remember these ?
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Dual-Micro-SD-TF-to-Memory-Stick-MS-Pro-Duo-PSP-Card-2-Slot-Adapter-Converter-SS-/321818852720?_trksid=p2141725.m3641.l6368
I agree with you for the most part, but I disagree that their isn’t enough interest.
That won’t be the case here. There’s no exploits. Gateway used a kernel exploit to bypass security. Blackfin does NOT bypass security–hence the *** with the card sharing.
We often forget the gateway card gave users choice almost 3 years before the cfw available now. It’s fun to sit on the sidelines and criticize but gateway did a huge service and started the ” scene” moving in the right direction.
Gateway only enabled piracy, nothing else. It didn’t create a scene or moved anything.
First Emunand – First Booting from SD card — Like it or not, take your revisionist history elsewhere.
How could you forget the First Console Bricker then? That story even made it into the news.
On an unrelated note, Wololo please approve the comments which were erroneously blocked by a spam filter faster. It’s pretty discouraging to write an informative comment and never see it appear on the blog, as I’ve already seen it happen several times before.
Apologies about that. We get hundreds of comments on the blog every day, and 90% of them are approved instantly. The other ones need lots of my time for review, I’m doing it pretty much every day after work.
In other words comments that were erroneously marked as spam should appear on the site with 48h: 24h for me to unblock them, than 24h for the cache to refresh.
Except GW used exploit to hijack and reroute boot sequence into SD card, which is why it’s possible without GW. Black Fin appears to use cartridge plugin just to feed your system data from PC and perform remote authentification, it’s not running any code on Vita itself. Basically is just PC-Vita adapter (using server running on PC as brain).
Grossly oversimplifying, it’s just a very long wire between the Vita and the cart.
I highly doubt there’s anything remotely useful which can be found by dissecting the innards of the thing.
Great!!!
hi Stanislav
Why would anyone even think that P2P would be a good idea for this. This thing isn’t gonna stay for too long. I’ll just hope there’ll be CFW someday which will make cards like these unnecessary.
Just downloaded the manual and application from the site.
Time will tell if this solution is successful.
Anyway i’m eager to see the first units reverse engineered!
No Mac support means I can’t use it.
good riddance
What about a Virtual Machine tho
Lol ever heard of Bootcamp? I was more than capable of setting up Rejuvenate on my Vita using Windows 7 via Mac. Not difficult.
with that face what do you expect from him?
LOL! XD
Hopefully this will encourage VITA hackers that have expoits that -drumroll- might be used for piracy -badum tssss-to release them for free so cobra wont be able to profit. No, this is not silly. Pandora for PSP was only released after it was sold to chinese stores making money unbricking PSPs — i am sure we all remember the videos with the sleigh-of-hand battery trick. At that point, it existed, some devs had it, and nobody had a clue what it was and how powerful it was.
if they publish android application for it it will be worth it , i dont thing i am going to buy that it is so expensive and i am going to use my vita in the way not in the home
i am on 3.60 right now so this hack will not work for me
I got a sample today from them, as i own the biggest site around for the vita news, don’t be sad wololo you will get your sample soon (; just kidding this is the big site of course, keep up the good working
Now ,the site of http://www.game4deal.com has onsale for this , and i see the price is $96.5/pcs … the official has announce that the firmware and instruction for it . can check details .
You can get it here for $50 O.o
http://psha.xyz/CobraBlackFin
that is not cool
He’s a child. Ignore him
Exactly. He is a b@st@rd child of a N@zi. Pure filth.
Still riding my *** 😀
HunHunHunHunHunHaHa
Lol even if this leads to a hacker finally fully hacking the vita, ive just lost all interest or care for the portable now, its not even been used or turned on in just a little over a year.
Man I hope this gets off the ground quick, I would love to try certain games, I don’t want to put money down for initially, if the games are good I’ll buy all of them, if some are good, some are bad, the ones that are bad I’ll delete, and the ones that are good if I think are overpriced, I’ll wait for a price drop to support the developer, It’s as simple as that.
If I pirate your game it shows interest, if I buy your game it means I want more, every pirate knows that games cost money to make, so if devs disappear, then games disappear, then piracy disappears as well, but that will never happen.
i agree with you
in fact i already buy all the game that i like in the cheep price just like you .
in fact i thing i will not west my mony on that hardware , i like to buy the game with that mony .
but i intresting to see how this hardware work it is exciting , i dont know why 😐
VITA is ready to breathe its last breath any day now. By the time a relevant hack is out it will honestly be pretty much useless if it isnt already.
My question is does this thing do anything “magic”? As in something that wasn’t already known? I don’t know enough about hacking and hardware modding but I’m sure some people here do. May that mystery source knows, anyways I’m thinking if there’s any potential for a (dare I say kernal) hack to come from this, I would be happy to contribute to a paypal account to get this device into the hands of someone who can make it do great things for the vita, I just want to know there’s any hope for that
Yesssss!!Please continue!
Heeeeeeeey!!! Long time no see! 😛
LOL
Maybe it is possible to edit one of the game backups so when people load it we can get a buffer overflow and possibly access the kernel. If we could do something like that I would be all in. no point in messing around with this.
I wonder if this would allow lower firmware games to run, because, since we have to keep the firmware up to a point for it to work, and since it’s possible to manually copy the game files, wouldn’t it also allow to modify some possibly uncripted parameter file to make newer games run on older firmware?
People seem to focus a lot on how this can be used for piracy, but how about just personal use? I can store my entire library on an SD card and not connect it to the internet to play my library of games, right?
Piracy sucks, but it’s not like the Vita has any real life left anyway. I can only compare enabling piracy on the Vita through this or CFW to a simple mercy kill.
You’d never believe the “Vita is dead” rhetoric from all the comments this post is receiving. Way more than average.
Nothing you can do about it. These people don’t play Japanese anime games so I can’t really blame them either.
PS Vita is 90% dead so this device is kinda worthless.
that is not true :-w
I could very easily buy 10-12 physical Vita games for $100. Why would I buy a severely limited flashcard to pirate those 10-12 games at $115?
I was excited about this but not anymore. I hope it gets cloned and be available for $60ish
exactly
Well if i can get one in Iran , i will surely buy one , no matter the cost , Vita cards are selling around 120$ here , each one , so why not ?! and btw i kinda agree that piracy does kinda shake the scene , vita got no love from his creator itself , maybe this will be a little step to progress the other hack and other ability , since it will carry a Micro SD card WHICH IS heck CHEAPER 😐 imagine later some how they can do something to play some movies off that micro SD card , think bigger people , yes its to soon to talk about it , but atleast dont kill it right off….
I hope someone can hack this f*cking psvita like hacking 3DS T_T
Most hackers do not like to do so.it seems it’s not worth the problem (for them),but i DO hope it will be hacked.
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