Vita hacking bounty ideas

[reprep]

As we all know, vita isn't doing well and it is very unlikely that the situation will change in the future.

I still have high hopes for Vita. It is a great device for PS1 and PSP games. Also nearly all PSP emulators look great on it. The thing is, they would look even better if they ran on the native vita side. This would avoid double upscaling for PSP emulators (they first upscale/downscale to PSP resolution and then upscale to Vita resolution). I am not even counting the extra cpu/gpu power which would make more powerful emulators/homebrews.

The interest in Vita is already fading away and i fear that when finally homebrew is possible, there would be noone interested in it.

I am zero interested in Vita piracy. There is only a few games i am interested and thanks to the lack of general interest, they can be bought cheap. But as i have said it numerous times, vita would be a great emulation monster. Much better than GCW Zero/PSP/3DS or whatever you name if properly utilized.

Ninjhax for 3DS is the exact thing i want for Vita. http://smealum.net/ninjhax/ It lets homebrew but doesn't allow piracy so devs don't run away from it. It provides a nice menu, it is easy to use and from what i see it is actively developed.

I know it won't be done over a day and numerous threads like this have been opened before but i guess it doesn't hurt to discuss. What do you think would be a good incentive for hacking Vita? Do you think a bounty thread with proper rules can help? A respected dev can write the rules and i am sure wololo community will help it. Can you think of other incentives?

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[ordi]

March 2013:

If not for the legal concerns I would have started the bounty myself ages ago. I actually already have money secured for that sole purpose, and am just lacking the legal visibility on how to make this happen while not stepping anywhere close to the DMCA (or its local equivalent in France, DAVDSI).

March 2014: viewtopic.php?f=23&t=37407

March 2015: this thread

Spooky... or not

But yeah, a bounty for a native Vita hack is a good idea and it would probably attract many devs, but unfortunately it will most likely never happen on this site.

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[reprep]

Thanks for the input. Here are two bounty threads, both ended with success. viewtopic.php?f=23&t=41774 viewtopic.php?f=20&t=41288 Of course the total amount for Vita hacking will probably be much, much higher than these.

If this site or a third party doesn't collect the money, i don't think there will be legal issues. Though of course then there will be the issue that the pledged amounts aren't donated to the dev after it is released. It is a price to pay for avoiding legal issues i guess.

I guess first we have to agree on what is considered as hacking the Vita (something similar to Ninjhax is my best guess, though i am no expert), then if there should be money involved or some other kind of incentives, if it is money involved, how will it be collected etc.

Also we can decide on some milestones, like 25% of total sum will be donated when first step is achieved, 50% when second step is achieved etc.

I would love to hear from site management too. Of course other sites might host it, but to be honest, i don't think i can find enough people interested in vita hacking in other sites.

[ss4gogeta069]

I think it's a great idea. As far as what constitutes a hack, I would say you have to be able to port/run emulators. If someone were to get emulators running native I would say we've struck oil!

[Hykem]

The interest in Vita is already fading away and i fear that when finally homebrew is possible, there would be noone interested in it.

I can only speak for myself, but I sure won't lose interest on the Vita.
The challenge has been proven to be harder than expected and the more obstacles I face with it, the more committed I become to hacking it.
It sure is a though device to break and makes a good job implementing security measures, but everything can be defeated.

[reprep]

I can only speak for myself, but I sure won't lose interest on the Vita.

that is quite reassuring. Would you define the steps in hacking Vita? like 1st step is blabla 2nd step is getting userland access 3rd step getting kernel access 4th step having SDK etc.

[yifanlu]

Step 0: open sdk. Difficulty: extremely easy (only requires programming skills). Nobody has done this yet even though it doesn't require any knowledge of Vita aside from what you can find in the leaked sdk. Very discouraging. You can't run homebrew if you can't even compile homebrew.

Step 1: userland memory dump. Difficulty: easy (requires exploiting webkit). Done.

Step 2: find exploit in dumped shared libraries and use it to exploit a system app (like settings). Difficulty: hard. Last I've heard the group working on this are running into some roadblocks.

Step 3: with a system app, more syscalls are accessible and fs is also directly accessible. Use this to find a syscall that leaks memory. Difficulty: hard. Requires luck as well as patience.

Step 4: with kernel information leak, can make more targeted attacks at syscalls. Including any syscall that takes in obfuscated kernel pointers. (You must have a memory leak to get past the obfuscation). Difficulty: harder

Step 5: once a kernel crash is found, trial and error to exploit it. Difficulty: requires advanced knowledge of ARM systems and assembly. Hardest difficulty.

Step 6: ??? We'll talk after the other 5 steps are completed. But you're not done yet.

5 easy steps.

[Ruben_Wolfe]

Well, a bounty is actually not a bad idea.
If every person on this site will donate 1-5 bucks for, lets say, Wololo himself that will take responsibility on this money, and will make an official bounty out of it, then that'll at the very least get hackers a bit more motivated.
You should discuss it with wololo himself, hearing what he has to say about this idea.
As a community point of view, I think that itll be quite impressive to achieve such accomplish.

In addition, its also quite important to state that this bounty can be high as heck, but itll mean nothing if it wont be a realistic one as well. As yuifanlu stated, exploiting the vita takes many steps, and therefore a bounty should be for a perticular agreed goal (or rather just any progress?) that will move the vita scene a bit forward.

[qwikrazor87]

Well, a bounty is actually not a bad idea.
If every person on this site will donate 1-5 bucks for, lets say, Wololo himself that will take responsibility on this money, and will make an official bounty out of it, then that'll at the very least get hackers a bit more motivated.
You should discuss it with wololo himself, hearing what he has to say about this idea.
As a community point of view, I think that itll be quite impressive to achieve such accomplish.

In addition, its also quite important to state that this bounty can be high as heck, but itll mean nothing if it wont be a realistic one as well. As yuifanlu stated, exploiting the vita takes many steps, and therefore a bounty should be for a perticular agreed goal (or rather just any progress?) that will move the vita scene a bit forward.

About what wololo has to say about it.
viewtopic.php?f=23&t=41923&view=unread#p382563

[Ruben_Wolfe]

Well, a bounty is actually not a bad idea.
If every person on this site will donate 1-5 bucks for, lets say, Wololo himself that will take responsibility on this money, and will make an official bounty out of it, then that'll at the very least get hackers a bit more motivated.
You should discuss it with wololo himself, hearing what he has to say about this idea.
As a community point of view, I think that itll be quite impressive to achieve such accomplish.

In addition, its also quite important to state that this bounty can be high as heck, but itll mean nothing if it wont be a realistic one as well. As yuifanlu stated, exploiting the vita takes many steps, and therefore a bounty should be for a perticular agreed goal (or rather just any progress?) that will move the vita scene a bit forward.

About what wololo has to say about it.
viewtopic.php?f=23&t=41923&view=unread#p382563

Yep, I was editing my messege for time now while you sent it (guess its useless to do so now). It still saddens me that an official bounty will most likely be on another place than here( if even at all.)
if anything, this site is the most rightfull place for it to be on.