First signed homebrew for psp and some reflections on the topic

    Some people call this day the PSP death date, however. On this day, the first homebrew application appeared on the network that did not require custom firmware or a homebrew enabler. Just an application that will run under any firmware.

    Briefly about how this was achieved and my subjective opinion about what will happen next.

    Everything ruined the demo


    For quite a long time disputes appeared on the forums, seethed and calmed down: the only applications that were portable from one psp with the firmware to another without any changes were demo games. For some time, finding holes in demo games has become the main (and not unsuccessful) fun for psp hackers.
    Many people came up with the idea: what if you take the demo, remove everything from it except the signature and start it? At first, no one succeeded, but now comrade kgsws did it. Further, a free translation of his words.

    It's simple, the application contains ~ PSP title from the demo game (UCES00206), one to one. You just need to pick up the last 16 bytes of the encrypted data block to match the header CMAC - yes, that’s the whole trick.

    There are some strange things, it’s impossible to start a homebrew with a b aboutthe largest executable block (but there is no such dependence on the data block), and because of the ~ PSP header, it is necessary that the homebrew be the same size as the demo.



    You can watch the video of the working homebrew here .

    (Update January 17, 2011) {
    In the news, the wololo comrades who became famous last year on the stage of psp hackers appeared the following news (free translation):

    After yesterday confirming the concept of signature from kgsws, the developer bbtgp only introduced a utility that can sign any Homebrew for PSP.

    <...> Still, it’s worthwhile to understand that signed applications can only work in user mode [user mode]. I don’t think it will be possible to run applications at the kernel level, so for now forget about the bootloaders of ISO images or "Signed CFW" ... in any case, what we have is good.

    According to bbtgp, the application was tested on the usual “hello world” prx, and worked fine on both psp1000 and psp3000.


    The application itself is here .
    } (end of update)

    Now for thought


    On the one hand, they have been waiting for this for so long: finally, it will be possible to use completely legal homebrew applications, which made you keep pirated firmware and, from time to time, lose the charms of official firmware (access to the store, new firmware itself).
    On the other hand, crowds of lemmings of schoolchildren of people will now only wait for a magic application to appear that allows one-button overtaking any image of any game into a digestible off-firmware view. Over time, such an application will certainly appear.

    It is absolutely clear that they will hardly be able to replace the encryption method for demo versions, if they do, then they will definitely leave the old one intact (otherwise they will have to shovel half the store), it is not clear how Sony will be protected and whether it will be at all, but it is clear that in the next firmware (which will require new titles) new encryption methods will be used.

    In general, the future is as follows: homebrew will be on new firmware, there will be old titles (it is worth noting that hen’s alpha version has already been released for 6.35, so starting up existing titles is not a problem now, except moral: I, for example, do not start), new ones will require new firmware, which will have a new encryption method.

    PSP death and Sony's only salvation - PSP2?

    More likely no than yes: if psp2 is not backward compatible with psp, then it is unlikely to become popular.

    Plus and minus

    + Over time: launching most homebrew off. firmware. You will no longer have to choose between a good video player and new games.
    - The emergence of a way to launch pirated games on almost all current and future firmware. Yes, that's a minus.

    PS : I remind you, this is my subjective opinion, maybe Sony will give devkits to everyone tomorrow and put the homebrew on their platforms officially, I would be glad, but this course of events seems fabulous to me.

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