Confirmed:Datel hacks all models of PSP & PSPGo for Christmas

[wraggster]

News via http://wololo.net/wagic/2009/12/24/c...for-christmas/

Before PSPGo owners start jumping of joy all over the place, let me be clear: this information is probably not useful for you if you thought you would get the joys of homebrews and underground PSP on your PSPGo or on your PSP3000 or on your TA88v3.

A few days ago Datel announced a new Action Replay software, compatible with all models of PSPs, including the PSPGo. The PSP scene was quite suspicious regarding this announcement. Today the product page features a Demo that anyone can download and try. I tried this Demo, other people tried the full product, and, yes, Action Replay runs on an official firmware.




It means that Datel wasn’t bluffing, and it also means that their code is signed. Only Sony is supposed to know how to sign EBOOTs, so we could think that Datel has some kind of agreement with Sony, but the documentation of the Action Replay is clear on that part:

Action Replay PSP is a 100% unofficial product and is NOT sponsored, endorsed or approved by Sony, nor any games developer or publisher.

To further confirm this, after installing the demo, you can have a look at your memory stick: Action Replay gets installed in the “UPDATE” subfolder of GAME, which is usually reserved for official Sony updates. It therefore means that Datel has figured out how to encrypt/sign EBOOTS, but needs their product to be in the UPDATE folder for some reason (easier to encrypt? Use of some specific access granted to this folder?)

Now, this is not very useful for hackers (and even less for pirates, ha). Yet another encrypted EBOOT to analyze will not bring anything. However, Action Replay allows users to patch memory with codes, so maybe something can be crafted in order to inject unsigned code in the PSP through Action Replay, which could unlock (at least) user mode (and therefore homebrews).

For the time being, it seems Datel has done what hackers have been trying to do for almost 5 years: figuring out the PSP’s encryption process. I’ll quote Silverspring here:

Seems they have done it for real. If so, it’s finally game over for SCE. There’s nothing they can do to stop it.
Probably fw updates will attempt to block it, however all Datel need to do is release an new update. They can sign any code they want now.
They’ve finally done what was the ‘Holy Grail’ of the PSP scene. Pretty impressive work

Who knows, maybe Datel will now come up with their own Custom firmware…

Very Interesting news for the future of PSP Hacking

[symbal]

Now this is interesting.

[ian h]

if this is true, datel will not realease a custom firmware. I believe they may allow the use of psp iso's and maybe homebrew, but not endorse it

[dazman]

I guess it's some code in the eboot that allows this to start, a ps1 game say copyright not correct, can that be patched to work.

Someone is going to get homebrew working soon.

Need to look at the eboots?

[NoQuarter]

Wow, now this is a big development. I might be getting a go one day after all.

At least it's not another lite blue tool battery fiasco, hopefully the code belongs to Datel and is not stolen...

[acn010]

iT is promising indeed but lets see what will happen in the future

[PSPdemon]

bet you anything its a hex edited update eboot that gracefully crashes like a game exploit

Datel could not figure out how to tie their own shoes, until they stole the idea from someone

wrong, its signed still and trying to hex edit would have caused it to appear corrupted on vsh

Wow, now this is a big development. I might be getting a go one day after all.

At least it's not another lite blue tool battery fiasco, hopefully the code belongs to Datel and is not stolen...

that i sure don't know...but I do know ( or at least it defiantly does seem like it ) that it is using the homebrew sdk... due to it using BenHur's intraFont.

[pspandrew2006]

This is interesting maybe something will develop out of this.

[rpgamer86]

Maybe soon we will see some unbricking on psps 3000 and TA88V3

[Krystal]

bet you that Sony will either Sue to snuff em out or demand this be taken off market or quickly patch like past 6.00/6.10 exploits

Eitherway this looks like a Universal exploit like the first one used on that Universal Hello World we say work on the Go