Why you should stop asking for a release for The Flow’s 3.68 Henkaku exploit
Disclaimer from Wololo: for some reason this article has generated more controversy than it should have, with in particular established hackers in the Vita scene voicing their doubts that the Vita has the power to emulate the PS2. This is a reminder that opinions expressed by the bloggers on this site are their own. The article below contains AcideSnake’s opinions on some aspects of the Vita scene, and although I don’t necessarily agree with everything Acid has to say, I still find this article a great read. Please use your own judgement when reading.
Console hacking is not an easy task and it isn’t achieved overnight. This is something you hear quite a lot in every scene and forum, and you hear it a lot from developers themselves.
There is a reason why developers “hold back” exploits, hacks and tools, and it’s not because they are “feeding their ego” and “taunting” users – there’s a war going on between console manufacturers and hackers so strategy has an important role.
Having an entry point allows you to find more entry points
The first time we all heard from The Flow was back in the PSP days and firmware 6.20; known to be unhackable at the time, Total_Noob (as he was then called) suddenly showcased a video of him running a kernel exploit that allowed him to launch pretty much any homebrew, emulator and, eventually, ISO for the console on Sony’s latest firmware.
I remember back then how every day I was looking up his blog to read about his progress on the upcoming 6.20 HEN that would finally liberate my PSP. It took him a few months but it felt like ages.
It was easy for me – as a regular user with little to no knowledge of computer science – to think he was being a d*ck for not releasing earlier and making us mere mortals wait for his holly grail of PSP hacks.
I was SOOOOOO wrong, and here’s why.
Soon after the release of Total_Noob’s 6.20 HEN, a hellbunch of other tools started showing up; ISO loaders, CFW for 6.20, an unofficial port of 6.20 HEN to 6.3X firmwares, and most important of all; the 6.20 permapatch and 6.60 Kernel exploit(s).
All of this was possible thanks to TN’s initial 6.20 entry point; it allowed other hackers to dig deeper into the system and find other flaws. And TN’s 6.20 HEN was in itself based off the great work done by M0skit0, Wololo, wth, JSS and others who made usermode exploits a useful reality (HBL!).
I can keep going back on the history of hacking the PSP and PS Vita, but truth be told: having an entry point (as little as it may be) will allow you to find more (and better) entry points.
There is only one known PS Vita User and Kernel exploit (for now)
Unless some other developer suddenly proves us wrong, we only have knowledge of The Flow’s 3.68 Exploits (which are two by the way; one in usermode, one in kernelmode).
As we all know very well, you need a user exploit first to then trigger the kernel exploit.
The kernel exploit is available to anyone (it is an exploit in the firmware itself shipped with every Vita), but user exploits are a whole different thing; they don’t exist in the Vita’s OS, they reside in an application or game that runs on the Vita.
So far we have seen exploits in the Mail App (that allowed us to arbitrarily write files to the memcard) and the Web Browser.
However, user exploits are easily patchable with new firmware updates, and take into consideration exploits in games and other apps are not bundled with every Vita so if you are unlucky enough to not grab the “golden game” with the exploit you will be unable to run the kernel exploit, even if your Vita does have such kernel exploit available.
We need more user exploits available to more users before the kernel exploit is released.
VHBL and ARK are still a thing
Over the years hackers have come up with more clever and better ways to hack our consoles. Focusing on the PSP and PS Vita we have the Infinity permapath for 6.61 by Davee, the Enso bootloader exploit by Team Molecule, and the custom PSP bubbles (researched by many developers). Loading PSP homebrews and emulator is possible on latest firmware with VHBL thanks to that.
While Enso has been patched, some hacks like the Infinity permapatch and custom PSP bubbles remains unpatchable; mostly due to how clever they are, requiring Sony to do mayor changes to the console software/hardware itself and/or the games, thus making it hard for them to engineer a working solution, and Sony doesn’t seem to care about updating their portable consoles.
Among these “unpatchable” exploits we still have some remains from the days of OILIX Hacks.
For those of you who don’t remember, OILIX was a Team formed mainly by qwikrazor87 and Acid_Snake (myself), with collaboration from other scene veterans such as Total_Noob/The Flow.
It was thanks to that team that we were able to play PSX games with full sound on our PS Vita for the first time, as well as 40+ PSP usermode exploits and 7+ PSP kernel exploits, and some of them are still available to us.
For the meantime it is still more theory than practice, but PSP and PSX bubble loaders should be (and most likely will be) a reality.
With all the PSX and PSP catalogue at your disposal (including all the homebrews and emulators we have for the PSP), there really is no need for a native hack right now, we need to go baby steps. Besides, because there is a smaller number of native homebrews for the PS Vita than there used to be for, say, the PSP*, there’s a fear the native kernel exploit will be used for piracy.
There is still a lot of life left in the Vita (and a lot to learn from it)
You might not believe me, but the PS Vita is powerful enough to emulate the PS2, at least with a compatibility similar to, or even better than, a non-BC PS3. It just requires knowing a lot about its architecture, both Software and Hardware, and a lot of hard work.
Sony knows this, but they never did it (another proof of them leaving the console behind).
Native hacks have been around for over a year now, there’s not enough developers and there’s not enough knowledge about the system.
You might think that if a native kernel exploit is released for latest firmware it will somehow attract more attention to other hackers, but this isn’t what happens. If the exploit is released, Sony will patch it and developers (both old and new) will have a harder time attacking latest firmware.
Hackers don’t have to publicly share their code to have other hackers on board, they can secretly communicate information without posing a threat of leaks or patches by Sony.
It is important for us right now to allow hackers to dwell into our devices as much as they can and for as long as possible, this allows exploits and hacks to be better and bigger. Releasing all the work done right now will throw it all to the garbage.
Enjoy your device and all it has to offer (for now)
The PS Vita is a wonderful console, the best portable PlayStation experience you can get (and the best portable experience overall IMHO). The console itself is cheap, the games (both physical and online) are cheap, and VHBL offers a huge amount of extra entertainment with no piracy involved (unless you count emulators and ROMs). Let hackers do their job of happily working on their code and their tools while you enjoy whatever has been released for now. Remember that the more time it takes for hackers to release something, the better that “something” will be.
* Note from Wololo: a section of the article was reworded which initially stated “there are no homebrews for the Vita”. This was meant to be an emphasis, and the goal here was not to insult any Vita homebrew developer. Both Acid_Snake and myself are heavily invested coders in the hacking scene (even if, at least for me, this was ages ago) so we’re on the same side, folks. Nevertheless, people didn’t fail to remind us that there is actually a large library of Vita homebrews, many of which can for example be found on the VitaDB here. Apologies to all developers who have taken this poor choice of words the hard way, this was not intentional.
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I agree with everything, but this: “Besides, there are no homebrews for the PS Vita, so we all know the native kernel exploit will be used for piracy anyways.”
perhaps I have misunderstood your point lol
Easily the most debatable statement he made. I actually got a little furious when I read that— everything else in the article I agree with, just not that. It makes me feel like he doesn’t know what he’s talking about, even though I know he does.
Well respect
> PS Vita is powerful enough to emulate the PS2, at least with a compatibility similar to, or even better than, a non-BC PS3.
Hahahahaha it’s been a long since I had a good “geek” laugh.
You don’t know anything about hardware! It’s completely impossible for such a weak ARM CPU to emulate a complex thing like a PS2…the GS had embedded DRAM,with bandwidth speeds that even the PS3 RSX can’t replicate,even modern PC’s have trouble emulating a PS2.
Actually it’s a miracle that the vita can “emulate” a PSP,the magic behind the miracle is called “hybrid hardware/software emulation” if the emulation was pure software the PSP emu would go @ 5 FPS.
Thats true but it has nothing to do with DRAM …lol.
its many the cpu and the fact that there was never an inject point for a ps2 Emulation or “visualisation of ps2” like with ps1 games or PsP games made by the developer. Old Source like NES emu or SNES aer no problem and dont even require an inject point for the code to run. Only the “homebrew” enabler. Which henkaku provides 🙂
Of course it has something to do with the eDRAM….how can you emulate something like that on a weak arm CPU with a weak GPU? You can’t (most of the times) an android phone 8x times more powerful than the vita can’t.
The PS3 can’t really do that either,most of the PS2 games for the PS3 run slower,and most of the games that work require sony’s patches,even the PS4 has trouble emulating PS2 games.
You don’t know anything about software/hardware dude,you’re just like the author,I’m a real engineer and I tell you,there’s NO WAY a vita can emulate a PS2…
I can perfectly emulate PS2 images….. And all I have is a core i7 laptop with a basic nvidia chip….. Nothing special if you’re a Steam gamer as well…
“even modern PC’s have trouble emulating a PS2”
Not sure what you consider a modern PC but I havnt come across a ps2 game that I cant run at full speed 50/60fps on my ryzen 5, 8gb ram and gtx 1060 and the games look absolutely gorgeous. PCSX2 has come a long way
But ya bottom line the emotion engine is a difficult engine to emulate. In comparison, ps4 is full on x86 architecture so we will see a stable ps4 emulater much sooner than we saw a stable ps2 one as x86 is not hard to emulate due to it being universal known. According to wiki the emotion engine was MIPS based and even had a custom instruction set.
I’ll take Acid_Snake’s word over some no name “engineer”
I think his name’s Richard!
Most PS2 games can run fine on older i5 laptops once you use some speed hacks, I finished Sotc, burnout 3 and FFX on my macbook that only has a low power 2.3ghz i5 (and many gamecube games too, some like Fzero GX din’t work well enough though).
I’m not saying that the vita has as much power as theses laptops, but Sony has all the keys for the fastest PS2 emulation possible, it wouldn’t surprise me to see the vita running many PS2 games fines with sony software. But that will never happen with hackers or non Sony devs, they simply lacks the internal documentations and ressources that Sony software engineers have at disposition.
For all we know most PS2 ports to the Vita or PS3 could work a bit like Wine (yes I know, Wine Is Not an Emulator but it can run non native software and that’s often why we use emulation).
If the Vita has a “weak ARM CPU”, then why is the performance always pitted between the PS2 and PS3 in performance?
“PS2 games for the PS3 run slower”… You are talking about ports or original games (backwards comparability)? The first run of PS3 had all the needed hardware to natively run PS2 games (all games working 100%). Later when they lowered the price of the console, they tried to emulate the chips they removed and failed miserably. This broke many games and instead of fixing the emulation, they resorted to patches. This in no way means the PS3 is poor at running the games, it just means Sony has no idea how to emulate their hardware.
Emulation is not just a matter of the relative general computational power of the systems. It can be computationally difficult for some architectures to solve the math required to emulate certain functions of the target system because the architectures are so different. It has the take a very long way around to perform steps that were streamlined in the original hardware. Your PC has less trouble because modern x86 CPUs are so vastly overpowered (many times faster) compared to the PS2 that it can brute-force it and still get acceptable speed even if not efficient. The Vita does not have this massive overperformance vs. the PS2, and in such cases it will struggle if the emulation target has too many functions that are not efficient on the ARM architecture.
A PS 2 emulator on vita would be cool to see in time to come happy days will come upon us.
It seems like Sony probably did something to scare these devs. Seems like everyone is backing off. Oh well, I can’t blame them for getting scared. I’ll be patiently waiting for the leak.
=_=a
I don’t mind waiting as it could mean more exploits could be found and it will be harder, longer for Sony to patch it. Sony can’t just release a new firmware update without properly testing it to make sure it doesn’t break something else. Sure they want to patch the exploits but not at the cost of breaking something and getting backlash from legitimate users. This isn’t the 80’s where there was no internet and people didn’t post everything bad about a product and it would take a while before the public would hear anything bad about it.
Take all the time you need.
yea. i can say this is all very true (except PS2emu on Vita…impossible!!!) but also there is some underlying threat i can not speak about. hmm wonder who that could be from!?
“Besides, there are no homebrews for the PS Vita”
I’m confused. What the heck is all this *** I’m running on my Enso PSTV then?
releasing the exploit surely would mean an upcoming inevitable 3.69 just to fix it , and at this point, i personaly think, that there’s not much things that you can do in 3.68 that you can’t do on 3.65 and even 3.60. And personaly, I would prefer a release after Catherine Full Body :3
I see what this replying is hinting at and trying to say but you can’t compare the amazing Fl0w with a certain Frenchie who is indeed taunting and doing it for his ego. TheFl0w doesn’t use his real name (what hacker does that? No one. It’s part of hacker culture) to tell Sony how stupid they are. So nice try here.
A_nub is
Great article!
Very interesting read. Theres a lot of Discussion and Speculation From End users on why devs release or do not release. This post opened my eyes a bit more, thank you
I agree. The longer things take the better usually.I know this is frustrating for people on a higher firmwsre than 3.60 but, there is the option out there for people who want 3.60 and below firmwares by picking up a 2nd vita or buying a pulled board.
I’ve got my personal Vita at 3.65 enso and as it stands I cannot see many reasons to be on a higher firmare besides to pkay a handful of games.
I do have a Vita at the current firmware which I have to keep uodated and would be nice to have an exploit for but I’m not too fussed.
If you can pick up a second Vita.
didn’t sony said their eta is 2020 from a website that’s non-English
ok I thought there was some huge news or sumthing :V
Sooo backups ruined CFW for you because it made the OFW update? Sounds like that was your issue for not taking precaution for it.
“PS Vita is powerful enough to emulate the PS2” I’d argue against this considering the fact it struggles to even run most of its own games at atleast 30fps even with oclockvita and also the fact the ps2 had a 299 MHz processor while the vita has 444 MHz processor which isn’t a whole lot to work with… heck even snes vc on the 3ds requires use of a 804 MHz quad core processor when the original system had a 3.58 MHz single core processor…
Lol, post by a major leaker
What’s research? Goodness, these articles are baffling with how stupid these claims get. Previously, we had “3.65 can’t play backups!” Uh, I’m doing that right now. Now the Vita can emulate the PS2 almost perfectly? HOW!?
Sony has the ability to overclock the psvita. To get playstation classics to work on it. But they refused not to do that. Cause they’re too busy thinking about the playstation 4.
LOL post by a major leaker.
PS2 emulation?! Seriously?!
hah I just wish I could get adrenaline going on 3.68 like VHBL. The full hack is a novelty for me.
Is 3.65 Enso without 3.60 delayed as well? Sitting on a new Slim on 3.65 and the wait is torture :/
The PSP lives on today as a jailbroken device, and this was made possible because it has been fully exploited through the end of its support cycle with Sony. Commercial interest in the PS Vita is dying down, and it is likewise nearing the end of support from Sony. If we want the PS Vita to have a future in homebrew and retro gaming, it is important for hackers not to tip their hand too early. Sony still has an obligation to protect the interests of its commercial contributors, and they will make an effort to provide due diligence until the Vita is officially end-of-life. There are plenty of exploitable Vitas available for homebrew developers – the real bottleneck is learning the GPU hardware. A little patience, please, and soon enough it will be open Vitas for everybody. After all, unbroken Vitas are cheap and plentiful for those who need to play the latest commercial games too, and piracy is no excuse for haste.
Powerful enough to emulate the PS2? What a load of BS
PS2 emulation on the PS Vita? Now that sounds funny.
PS3 can do it, sure. But it’s also backed up by a 3.2GHz CPU and an emulator developed by Sony. If Sony had decided to do the same for the Vita, that would maybe have been possible – but even that would be a stretch. Considering the PS Vita is working with a 444MHz ARM CPU (compared to the PS2’s 299MHz CPU), this won’t happen. Even my laptop’s i7 (ok, it’s only a Surface Pro 3, but still an i7 nonetheless) or my smartphone’s SD835 run most PS2 games at half speed only.
My question is: What will work? Will Adrenaline work on 3.68 Henkaku? I just hope it does. I will definitly stay on 3.68 and wait, greetings go out to theFlow, you give us Vita owners hope!
From what I understand, it won’t be much different aside from no enso. I can live with non perma patch for the simple standpoint I can play newer games and still have the advantage of henkaku.
To all those that keep asking for an ETA.
Instead of thinking the developers are somehow obligued to provide anything, they should support them somehow.
Hacking a console, besides a hobby (an expensive one that is), is for most (if not all) of the developers/hackers, an unpaid “job”. They don’t need greedy and dastards “bossy ***’s” asking for an ETA as if they’d payed for something, they should get support from the community.
A few days late, but claiming there is no homebrew for the Vita is flat ignorance. Being fair, it is limited in number, especially in comparison to how many people actually play them on a regular basis.
I for one have the tools sitting and waiting, and plans to get another vita when the release for the later firm becomes imminent, simply because it is more difficult to find a 3.60 unit that i feel it is worth. Once this becomes a reality, I have plans to start releasing more homebrew for the device that people might actually consider worth playing.
As much negative things S&P has done, the one good thing he truly did was make Unity for Vita available to the public. This opens up the possibility for me to port my games I am deving over without the hindrance of my limited C++ knowledge
Good read! Keep up the good work Acid_Snake.
Here is what should be a pretty obvious point to make, rushed releases also tend to lead to bricks. So unless you want to turn your console into a paper weight, WAIT FOR THE DEV TO BE READY TO RELEASE!
I just want to edit my Persona 4 Golden Save but i’m fine with waiting
Well, considering how difficult it is to create the possibility of PS2 emulation, it seems reasonable to just get an actual PS2 and add OPL and play all the PS2 games you have on a hard drive at almost at 100% compatibility. Development has gone far and you can add PSOne games as well. Would it be nice to play PS2 games on the go, sure. But you have to consider the massive overhaul it would take to emulate each unique game on a limited handheld. The power might be there but hackers do these things for the love of the game. I can wait, but in the end the emulation won’t be as polished as it is on the original console. Either way I am grateful that we have what we have and that we have other options.