p2p news / p2pnet: Just over two weeks ago I reported to you all that a huge exploit had been found in the PSP firmwares 2.50/2.60 that allowed the use of kernal access. Now more has happened in the PSP homebrew community than in the last two months.

After tens of bricked PSP’s searching in vain for a way to utilise this kernal exploit, Dark Alex with help from Mathieulh and Yoshihiro from SonyXTeam finally released their 2.50/2.60 > 1.50 downgrader, titled the “Downdater” on the 2nd July 2006.

What was thought completely impossible happened in less than a week.

With the kernal exploit, it allowed them the use of the PSP’s flash memory, which meant they could write to it. They used this to create a setup that allowed them to format the flash memory and write a firmware to it.

Using Fanjita and Ditlew’s eLoader, it creates a logical partition on the flash drive which it formats and starts writing to. Using a few files obtained from someone elses 1.50 PSP, it dumps a copy of the 1.50 Firmware from the memory stick to the flash0, and writes the IPL (Initial Program Loader) to the flash0 too.

Assuming everything works right, you’ll end up with a 1.50 PSP, the magic firmware! What’s more, I can confirm this working myself as I downgraded my PSP last night!

But, I came across a problem. I’ve got loads of PSP games that require 2.00, 2.50, and 2.60 to run. Do I discard them? Sell them on eBay? Nope!

A week ago, Dark Alex again came up with yet more PSP goodness, releasing a program that could decrypt PSP firmwares. Again, like the exploit, it’s no good unless utilised, and it was.

Booster updated his DevHook program to 0.44. DevHook is used as a way of fully emulating any PSP firmware. It extracts all the setup files, and runs the firmware entirely from the memory stick. Meaning you could have 1.50 one minute, be playing Tomb Raider: Legend the next on 2.71, then a simple reboot and you’re back on 1.50, nothing harmed at all.

That’s two strikes for Sony. An impossible downgrader, and a way of fully emulating ANY firmware you want. The only thing that could possibly make things worse? Strike three! A 1.50 > 1.00 downgrader!

Dark Alex got to work again, and using the same method as before, created a 1.50 > 1.00 downgrader.

1.00 is the TRUE magical firmware, as the eboot files don’t have to be split (although it’s only a minor annoyance).

In the space of two weeks, an exploit has been found and utilised by some impressive coders. Three times Sony have been stabbed in the back, and truly this is a two-fingers up at Sony from the PSP homebrew community.

I said give it time, and look what they’ve produced… PSP Magic!

Daniel Hudson – p2pnet
[Hudson (huds601 - danhudson89 @ gmail.com) is a 16-year-old UK Student who's just finished 'compulsory education', and who says he's, "highly passionate about Bittorrent, PSP's, and freedom of speech."]

Digg this.

Also See:
huge exploit – Huge day for PSP homebrew!’, June 28, 2006

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This entry was posted on Friday, July 14th, 2006 at 11:58 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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