PSVita News: SKGleba releases psp2hfw, a toolset for creating Hybrid Firmwares – You can use Ensō on 3.67+, dual boot and test stuff on different firmwares easily!
It seems that as the PlayStation Vita gets older, interesting developments are becoming more numerous with a significant amount of work going making a native Nintendo 64 emulator and the ability to use the PSP’s MIPS CPU found on the Vita’s motherboard in native homebrew to which some stuff could be off-loaded especially in emulation of MIPS-based systems. In this article, we’ll be looking at yet another interest development which is SKGleba’s psp2hfw!
What is psp2hfw?
As the article’s title makes clear, psp2hfw is a toolset by SKGleba for the creation of Hybrid Firmwares.
psp2hfw is a pretty interesting tool set if you enjoy playing dangerously with your console!
For those wondering what a Hybrid Firmware is, in the Vita context it refers to running a firmware with a different boot loader version such as using the FW 3.65 boot loader with FW 3.68 or FW 3.73. When it comes to an explanation of how things work, SKGleba has stated on Reddit that Hybrid Firmwares in the aforementioned manner are possible due to the fact that bypassing RVK checks allows anything in the ‘os0’ and ‘vs0’ partitions to be run.
SKGleba mentions that using psp2hfw is risky as it messes around with os0 but using enso_ex greatly reduces the risk of bricking your console since it allows you to recover from ‘os0’ mess-ups even after a full wipe of sectors from 0x80000 onwards.
What can I do with psp2hfw?
With psp2hfw, you can run Henkaku Ensō (coldboot hack) on firmwares that never supported it! (Image from demo video)
As mentioned above, using psp2hfw can be risky so it’s not for the fainthearted or people who don’t know what they’re doing. With this in mind, let’s go over some of the most realistic uses including:
- Running Ensō on Firmware 3.67 and newer
- Henkaku Ensō only supports FW 3.60/5 as it’s based on a bootloader flaw
- This allows you to have hacks without having to run the exploit manually each time you boot the device up!
- The ability to dual boot firmwares provided you have SD2Vita
- This makes testing across different platforms much easier and could be convenient to some
- Using it in conjunction with hypothetical future firmwares like FW 3.74 or FW 3.75 if these firmwares patch exploits that are already in use thus making them hackable.
Conclusion
To learn more about psp2hfw and read instructions on how to use it, check out the link below although it’s of utmost importance to remember that using it requires you to know what you’re doing else you may damage your device. In other scenes, Cemu 1.18.1 was publicly released and Lockpick_RCM 1.8.2 is out with support for the recently-released Switch FW 10.0.0
SKGleba’s Twitter (future updates): https://twitter.com/skgleba
psp2hfw GitHub Repository: https://github.com/SKGleba/psp2hfw
So if I boot from a newer firmware for psn but still switch back to older ones for homebrews this allows hacks to be undetectable from Sony or are there still leftover things that could ban my account?
with modoru, we can downgrade any version we wanted. And with ref00d plugin ve can play all games on 3.60 or 3.65 fw. So i think no big deal to use hybrit firmware. At least using 3.60-3.65 has no brick risk, because of ‘os0’ and ‘vs0’ partitions.
@quackbla
Downgrading to another firmware means that you’ll be using whichever bootloader comes with that firmware version. If that weren’t the case, then the vulnerable bootloader from an older OFW (i.e. 3.60 OFW) would had been the same on all the next OFW versions which is not true, that’s where psp2hfw comes to the game.
@aytug25
But sticking with 3.60/3.65, doesn’t allow you to test how your homebrew behaves on any other firmware under Ensö, and how it could be enhanced to overcome such problems if they would arise.
psp2hfw is more usefull for devs in so many ways. The final user shouldn’t experiment with such features, because of the risks involved.
An even though devs try yo make things simple to the final user, many of them are way too st#*id and always find a way to ruin things out.
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Well, I know what I’ll be trying out on my spare Vita!