PS Vita compulsory system Update 1.510
Update: it is actually possible to copy mp3, movies, and photos without being connected to the net. The connection is required only when using the content manager, which is not compulsory to use for media files, but for games and save data. You can read more here.
Today as I was using the PS Vita “content manager” in order to copy some files to the PS Vita, the content manager refused to start until I updated my firmware to official update 1.510. (This literally happened 10 minutes ago)
What surprises me is that the vita was disconnected, so I am assuming the update order came from the client on my PC (Update: confirmed. And the Vita refuses to run the content manager if the PC is not connected to the net).
A friendly advice to anybody who tries to “investigate” the Vita like I do: install the content manager on a PC that has no network connection (Update: I think “bastards” is the first word that came to my mouth when I saw that the vita refuses to connect to the PC if the Pc is not connected to the internet. This is really really concerning, and I hope a few people will have a look at the code of the PC “content manager” client. I’d be extremely happy to know why Sony is spying on me through the content manager when I’m copying my personal pictures to the vita…), and disconnect the Vita as well. It seems Sony has a possibility to prevent anyone from playing with the Content Manager too much. This also confirms that the PSP Exploit we’re working on is more or less moot, since as soon as it is made public, Sony will prevent people from copying the files to their Vita with an obligatory firmware update.
This is really twisted, and I could swear a compulsory update in order to use such a core feature of the console might be illegal in some countries…we’re far from the “you have a choice to stop using linux” here, it’s more of a “you have a choice to stop copying mp3 and movies from and to the console”.
I have no clue what this update is for, but I’ll have a look. I assume it patches some of the weird bugs that people reported, including (but not limited to) the weird “demo mode” glitch, and other “freeze in the xmb” type of errors…
is this even legal?
Apple Ipod does this
Apple doesn’t force you. It annoys you with a prompt telling you to update but will still allow you to use your product even if there is no internet connection. I have my iPhone 4 on 4.3.3 and still have no drawbacks besides an annoying reminder. This is taking it to a whole new level. Such a level to sway my preorder. Anyways good luck wololo. Your work is appreciated.
*** movies lolololol ;D
i dont have a psvita , but if its that hard to copy some music or movies on the device, im not goin to get it
“downloading my *** movies” – wololo. I knew I wasnt the only wanker around here. 😉
PSP to run a umd game you have to update to the firmware requirid by the game if your firmware is a low version, sony pratices are old but the people run custon firmware with iso loaders these days not know this.
this is very different. For games this was justified by the fact that newer games might require new firmware features. Here, not only do they enforce the firmware update if you want to simply copy media failes, they also force you to have your PC constantly connected to the internet while you are copying files between your PC and your console, what is the reason behind that except to spy on users?
A UMD Game on the PSP does not ask you to be connected to the internet every time you want to backup your saved games!
I’m just going to come out and say it, when you typo’d “files” as “failes” it was ironic and I lol’d. :3
This is a major deal breaker for me. damn it $ony why do you have to suck so hard now?
I’m conflicted because i still want a vita but don’t want to be treated like *** by a corporation who i gave my money too. I hope someone patches this *** out because this is just wrong in so many ways. Hopefully it will be easy to RE because of the limited role the PC has in file transfers and we can just make our own non bloated Linux friendly “content manager”.
Please hack vita quicky!
We Do not want to pay for games. It’s worthless.
We need free iso games and cheat codes
Nah! You’re in the wrong place! We don’t want piracy here.
No, he is so right. Why the **** would you buy a game when you can get it for free.
But this is why Sony is protecting the Vita. Because of piracy Sony is now too much protective to Vita. And Wololo doesn’t like piracy. the devs is aiming to hack the vita only for running unsigned programs (homebrew) and not to backup games to play it for free (ISO).
I understand but, here in the Philippines the PSN is now not available since march 2010 and ISO our only hope. PSvita is not going to be release here but im sure retail stores will import and sell it here. and im not like the others(idiots) that will kill only to buy it. (people who will going buy a 3g model here is the most stupid of them all).
i live in the Philippines too and i can access the PSN fine (downloading games, dlc, videos etc.) without any problems have you ever tried changing your password because it requires you to that if you want to use your old accounts also try using version.txt or update your firmware to the latest version
I have no problem accessing the psn with my old account but my account is hacked and i cant create new account coz whenever i sign up for psn it always says under maintenance.
What are you talking about.
We can connect to the PSN just fine.
Also since you’re saying you can’t re-sign-up to PSN, have you tried this: http://us.playstation.com/psn/signup/
Let’s say you work selling bread and that is your only source of income, but people stop buying your bread because they can get it for free from another dealer. Do you think it would be fare for you who work so hard to make the bread and try to have a little earning from it? One thing is to completely screw sony for sc*** us, but another different thing is to screw the game developers and studios who work hard and mostly underpaid (Because of sony fees, contracts and permissions). Piracy is what make developers forget about the hardcore gamers.
I think “we” sc*** with Sony first.
Update your stuff or you cant use it?
Well, now the CoolGuys have another reason to play around vita’s insides.
cant we just hack it or something(internet connection)..so that content manager believes its connecting to sony but actually it connevts to us…
Yee.. I love console to be hack but not for Free Games but the homebrew tools that really rocks!
Like what PSP has.. Actually PSP games were minimal to me but what really amaze me alot are the Tool to modify your own and Truly own Gadgets.. (What I mean is you are the authority of your paid gadgets. Any kind of modification not by them but the owner itself)
Just like Reading (.PDF), watching (.flv) from intimidating site, lock folders, record audio and video, and many more..
I really don’t like the way it said. Which refer PSvita to be hack to play PSvita Games. Because its really gives a bad output. But if these games will give way to mass price e.g PSvita games cost only 15$ each then thats really good economic price for low-profit community.
really bad news…
Don’t tell me i didn’t tell you wololo.
I try to explain you many things about the PS Vita but you didn’t really want to listen me.
hope now you can understand
You also told me I would never be able to run PSP homebrews on the vita, yet I got one to run today. It’s difficult to make a difference between truth and bullsh#t in what you say…so, yeah, you were right on the spying part, but you were wrong on other stuff, so don’t come at me and tell me “told you so” when clearly half of what you said was gut feeling.
@silw
I have been following your comments since you bagan posting here and I must say I share the very same views as you.
This “content manager” is difficulting evrybody’s life and destroying our freedom.
I hope wololo listens more to you now, and together (you seem very capable), you two can acquire re-estabilishing the freedom of all users.
As a sidenote, do you know if the PS Vita browser supports userscripts? Could you do some debugging? Thank you.
Furthermore, as something on a far feature, do you believe a open source user made browser could be built? That would be great…
The PS Vita Browser = trio, WebKit, cairo, dtoa, expat, FreeType2, hash.c, ICU, libjpeg, libpixman, libxml2, list.c, PCRE.
all the lib/programs have a strict permission and some features have been removed, they don’t work like we want and due to a limitation, i’m not sure if we can do something right now.
the PS Vita don’t need necessarily Content manager to transfer files !
let’s tell some good news and some bad news.
I was talking with Wololo and in the end we had the same conclusion, the conversation will stay private because we need to keep that secret, even Sony maybe knows exactly what’s going on through the PS Vita.
the bad news, i found out that the PS Vita uses silk web browser (same as amazon one) silk routes what you are doing on the PS Vita to the Sony Server.
Creepy browser and slow one (sub-components) and the silk server make the decision to execute a code or not.
The good news, the silk version of PS Vita has many bugs and problem (exploit possible, it’s a lite version but probably temporary, you can also use it to transfer your files, you don’t need the content manager ;).
if you want to copy mp3, videos, etc… (extension that the PS vita recognized) you can do it without content manager.
Launch Web Browser PS Vita
Connect to your server or localhost
and download the files you want
i also found other interesting stuff, the PS Vita can recognize the pkg format that is used on Linux/Unix (but have some errors on it that is pretty interesting for later) if you try to download a mp3/mp4/etc it works well, if you try something else you will get an error message that says the files can’t be downloaded on the PS Vita.
Now about my works, i would tell everything i know to Wololo and person who need it and deserve it
I’m pretty sure Vita is gonna end up having the same fate as the PSP 😀
Damn …I don’t have a vita 😛 (Yet) ,try editing the hosts file in windows and trick the client into believing it is connected to the Internet , Also use Wireshark and analyze the vita client to see where it is connecting to.
please post your results
All this are just thoughts , I really don’t know if this applies to this situation :P..
I already explained to wololo how the PS Vita works and how Sony can be so annoying with this.
i was waiting to see somebody else talk about the PS Vita but i didn’t see anybody, after all, i decided to show what i knew about the PS Vita and what Sony does exactly, In the past i explained why the next PSP product was gonna be a problem for us
Unfortunately, nobody tries to understand what i wanna show, i do that to help, not to be against somebody, just something that i don’t like, is to give any importance to the piracy, i don’t support it but it would be nice for the indie dev and others to exploit the PS Vita, because this product has a good potential and we can go far with a product like this.
Check this few paste bin about it http://pastebin.com/u/OpenMind
I think the problem is that noone gives a ***.
Can you just copy the files directly to a memory stick?
No, because PSVita has an own card format (see this: http://vitadevwiki.com/index.php?title=Media),
you can’t copy anything unless you have a PSVita card reader xD
Good conversation with Wololo, thanks man 🙂 hope we can find many way for the PS Vita 😉
Don’t hack the psvita xD
What a fail of Sony. So a hacker(s) could stop all psp VITA owners from putting media files on there console.
I don’t think this media manager will hold on long but then again i’m just guessing. My guess is that Sony dedicated much on trashy security and forgot what people want/need.
eeehhm…. sony said that they did improve the updating system, right? so we don’t have to update when we start a game like on the ps3, right?
just think about this. you need to go from home in about 10 min. you want to drag some files ro the psvita. but then the thing needs to update. if you have limited internet speed (like my 300kb/s) and a slow pc (like mine) you are gonna waste about 30 minutes just to install this ***.
yeah, really a big improvement sony. we barrely have any trouble with your updates (sarcasm).
this is not only annoying for hackers but it is even annoying for normal users of the device. i can’t wait to see the reviews this thing gets.
are u try local internet ?
or are u fallow the connection way example:
psp > modem local > modem internet > ?(*)
if u find where is the connect :
WINDOWS\system32\drivers\etc\hosts
(*) http://www.google.com
im so sorry my bad english….
Okay so im waiting for a vita realese here but i want to start this *** up already
i have a request for wololo
two questions actually
Media Manager is a Software on the PSV or on your Pc?
arent we capable of Sigining PSP eboots?
so why not statrt there
Hello ***… :/
sony can track and spy on your devices now because of the gps in it, sony can also see if any changes or mods in their system binary or hex codes. so even if you’re working on a hack to crack the vita sdk and u haven’t release it yet sony will patch it before you would even release it to the world. when playstation network got hack and they rebuild their server, so when you sign into PSN sony is spying on you by system montior
Just a tought here, im not a hacker not something near of it, but if the problem is the pc, is not possiblr to modify the ip that the content manager is trying to fetch and pointed it to 127.0.0.1 or something similar and send the respone of “no new update” or something like that, cause i think that if we hear the respons send by sony we can reproduce it easily or im wrong ?
The PS Vita Browser = trio, WebKit, cairo, dtoa, expat, FreeType2, hash.c, ICU, libjpeg, libpixman, libxml2, list.c, PCRE.
all the lib/programs have a strict permission and some features have been removed, they don’t work like we want and due to a limitation, i’m not sure if we can do something right now.
the PS Vita don’t need necessarily Content manager to transfer files !
let’s tell some good news and some bad news.
I was talking with Wololo and in the end we had the same conclusion, the conversation will stay private because we need to keep that secret, even Sony maybe knows exactly what’s going on through the PS Vita.
the bad news, i found out that the PS Vita uses silk web browser (same as amazon one) silk routes what you are doing on the PS Vita to the Sony Server.
Creepy browser and slow one (sub-components) and the silk server make the decision to execute a code or not.
The good news, the silk version of PS Vita has many bugs and problem (exploit possible, it’s a lite version but probably temporary, you can also use it to transfer your files, you don’t need the content manager .
if you want to copy mp3, videos, etc… (extension that the PS vita recognized) you can do it without content manager.
Launch Web Browser PS Vita
Connect to your server or localhost
and download the files you want
i also found other interesting stuff, the PS Vita can recognize the pkg format that is used on Linux/Unix (but have some errors on it that is pretty interesting for later) if you try to download a mp3/mp4/etc it works well, if you try something else you will get an error message that says the files can’t be downloaded on the PS Vita.
Now about my works, i would tell everything i know to Wololo and person who need it and deserve it
Sorry i forgot, you can’t transfer files though localhost you need to have a server connected to internet, Silk = more a client than a web browser.
…….and moves like this are exactly why we were boycotting sony in the fist place.
I know you don’t wanna hear it wololo…. but….. “we told ya so”
If someone can’t manage to crack the content manager, then Sony has full control over what you do on your vita
i’m working on it, i found a way trought the client Silk of the PS Vita but is not the only one possibility 😉
I wish you luck…… but i’ve got to be honest, I hope the vita fails miserably….. and I’m thinking it probably will, I think everyone is sick and tired of sonys shenanigans.
Sorry though 😉 a little bit tired with my research/work.
The PS vita is an awesome product, strong possiblity and good potential, the problem came from Sony and not the product, if we find a way to exploit it, we can make nice stuff (not about piracy, i’m talking about emu/homebrew)
Hope the PS Vita scene don’t go like the PS3 or PSP.
It seems it only uses CMA as a proxy to retrieve the latest psp2-updatelist.xml file. The update may possibly be skipped by using a proxy server or server redirection.
Indeed. The only thing CMA is doing is a POST request to grab the latest psp2-updatelist.xml. I’ve analyzed the CMA.exe (main application), CMANPLib.dll (NP handler) and the CMAMetaGen.dll (Metadata parser) files and there doesn’t seem to be any relevant data being sent back to the servers.
From CMANPLib.dll: http://pastebin.com/a5VS1wPJ
Patching the GetTicket function call in CMANPLib.dll should do the trick.
Just a small update on this subject.
I’ve looked deeper into this and even disassembled the downloader and setup utilities looking for more information.
Turns out, there is some potential spying going on here. Well, this may depend on how people classify “spying”, but the CMA application collects much more information than it’s supposed to.
Basically, the main executable hooks CMANPLib.dll in order to start a network NP connection with the Sony servers and it hooks the CMAMetaGen.dll to parse every single file that goes through the application.
During execution, each file’s data is collected and stored in a security cookie which is shared through the NP connection.
However, the mandatory firmware update does not seem to be related to this. The CMA application itself does this on it’s own. Apparently, updates to the CMA application alone are just enough to trigger the firmware mismatch error (still need to investigate this).
What’s really concerning is that every single file is analyzed with the proprietary dll and the generated data fields ARE sent back through the cookie. Properties like “copyright”, “appli_description”, “content_path”, “permission_type”, “drm_string”, “marlin_id”, to name a few, are associated with the user’s files’.
I’ve also found some references to files used for media handling in a new .prx format. Their names are somewhat intriguing:
RiffPromoter.suprx
AACPromoter.suprx
Mp3Promoter.suprx
MsvPromoter.suprx
tiff_promoter.suprx
png_promoter.suprx
jpeg_promoter.suprx
gif_promoter.suprx
bmp_promoter.suprx
What’s these promoters supposed to do? :\