A new hack for the PlayStation Vita was recently engineered by Yifan Lu, who designed the software for his “Usermode Vita Loader” project, which intends to make it possible for users to create and load homebrew games onto the console.
Fortunately for Sony, and for any third party game developers intending to bring their games to the device, Yifan Lu has expressed his strong stance against piracy and claims that the hack can’t be used to pirate games.
He stated that it’s “physically impossible to decrypt or load retail games with [the] exploit”, which he developed for more innocuous purposes. However, he admitted the possibility exists for someone else to take his code and use it as a stepping stone to running pirated games on the platform.
“When the exploit goes public, it could be used as a stepping stone to analyze the system for farther exploits, including the more desirable kernel exploit, which if found would open the system up entirely (mods, CFW, maybe even Linux/Android, and unfortunately ISO loaders),” he said in an interview with enthusiast website PlayStation Lifestyle.
“However, it takes a lot of skills to find such an exploit,” Lu added, “and those who I talked to with the necessary skills are all anti-piracy. However, not thinking of potential other exploits, this one can only be used to load homebrews and nothing else…Sony’s system is really well designed and I believe a kernel exploit is very far away.”
Lu was keen to stress that he was “100% against piracy and no tool I will make will benefit piracy. This tool, in fact, cannot be used for loading backups/pirated content even if I want to because of the physical limitations of the exploit (it is userland, no rights to decrypt/load games).”
For the sake of Sony, third party developers, and anyone who wants to see a steady stream of titles for the PS Vita, let’s hope it stays that way.
