Vita hackers new year resolutions: Yifanlu to work on Vita lv0, Hexkyz to release a bunch of tools
I missed a couple of important announcements that were done around New year’s eve, so here’s a quick summary.
Team molecule to leave the scene, Yifan Lu will focus on researching Vita’s level 0
First of all, YifanLu wrote a lengthy blog post about the state of Vita hacking, and what he and the rest of team molecule intend to do moving forward. Chosen extracts:
Back in November, I said that I (and I am assuming the rest of molecule but I do not speak for them) would retire from the scene after taiHENkaku was stable enough and that time has finally come. Aside from a parting gift from Davee that should be released in a couple of days we will be retiring from all non-research tasks.
[…]
There are four distinct security levels on the Vita. Userland, kernel (lv2), TrustZone (lv1), and F00D (lv0). We have hacked the first three levels, but owning F00D is particularly challenging.
[…]
Attacking F00D will be my only focus in Vita hacking at this point and I welcome anyone who wants to help me in this journey.
So, team molecule is kind of moving on from the Vita scene. This shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone as Yifanlu announced that a while ago. They leave behind a set of high quality tools with the accompanying documentation, and a forum for people who want to ask questions or help with VitaSDK.
Also, Davee was supposed to release a “surprise” last week, but these damn hackers are so lazy they can’t keep a schedule. Plus, he said we’d be underwhelmed. I’m still excited to see what it’s about.
Last but not least, Yifanlu remains focused to some extent on the PS Vita, with a goal of hacking the level 0 of the device. He has not given any details of what additional benefit this could give The Vita scene. Access to the equivalent “lvl 0” on the PS3 gave us access to signing keys and a theoretical guarantee that firmware updates would not patch the hack. This did not prevent Sony from mitigating the issue with firmware updates though.
Hacker Hexkyz to release a few HENkaku tools + writeup on Vita TrustZone exploit
Still on the Vita front, hacker Hexkyz (mostly known around here for being one of the 2 hackers who reverse engineered HENkaku) stated on his blog he would release a few tools for HENkaku as well as a dive deep on a vulnerability in Vita’s implementation of TrustZone. Don’t get too excited though, as he explained that bug was patched a while ago:
As for the Vita, I have a bunch of tools I’ll be releasing as necessary and tons of documentation that I’ll be pushing to the HENkaku wiki. I have also recently managed to break TrustZone, but, unfortunately, the bug I’ve exploited was patched long ago. I suspect I stumbled upon the same bug Team molecule may have used in the past, but I plan on doing a proper write-up later on if they agree.
It’s sad to see team molecule go, but as I’ve stated a few times before, a console scene is not made of a single superhero. There are lots of hackers out there, some of whom don’t even know that they are hackers yet.
Awesome!
first
Shooow! Ansioso por mais novidades
eu tambem augusto
People Keep living 🙁 this sad.
I can help when it comes to food i like to eat! Lol thanks everyone on the scene!!!
They will never be forgotten, YOU ARE indeed a MIRACLE team molecule, and i pray to witness your reunion in the future…^__^
still waiting for vita memory card mod
Supposedly one is coming in February if I remember correctly. But what I want is to be able to use my Vita as a USB controller
least dramatic scene ive seen in a while
Are these dudes, computer engineers or comp-sci?
Sometimes just some geeks who are investing some spare time in researching consoles.
For advanced decompiling, you have to have a deep understanding of compilers and their associated program language.
Bought a PS Vita for the equivalent of 50 bucks only to realize it was on 3.61! Thinking of attempting to find an exploit instead of playing games and hopefully obtaining henKAKU on 3.61+. Where should I begin if I have the necessary C programming experience? Look for vulnerabilities in RAM/flash dumps?
Read the posts of yifan on his website 🙂
Wta.. why offline for update henkaku isnt used more.. untill now thi feb 2017 still can t use the offline henkaku.. aspecially when i update vita shell to 1.51.. offline be useless.
Tq for response.
Please don’t bash me but I just wanna ask, if YifanLu does in fact managed to hack f00d will it allow stuff like downgrading ofws and other stuff? I don’t really know anything about the Vita Hacking scene and just discovered HENkaku when I am already updated to 3.61. Also is he also the creator of ChikHEN? that hack for the PSP 3000?