HENkaku

Introduction

HENkaku is the first ever homebrew enabler for PS Vita and PSTV. It is akin to jailbreaking your iPhone or rooting your Android device.

Homebrew are games and other software not officially approved. For example, VitaDoom is a port of the classic game DOOM and mGBA lets you play GameBoy Advanced ROMs. You can find more examples in the showcase.

Best of all, HENkaku is 100% free. No cost. No ads. No “donations”.

How To Get

Visit https://henkaku.xyz from the built-in web browser on your PS Vita and press the “Install” button to install HENkaku. You must do this every time you reboot the console–that is, every time you turn the console off and on again.

Requirements

You need a PS Vita or PSTV running system firmware 3.60. Unfortunately, it is not possible to run HENkaku on any device running a higher firmware version and it is also not possible to downgrade your system firmware.

You also need a memory card (any size) with at least 10MB of free space. Internal memory on newer devices is currently not supported. In order to transfer homebrew to your device, you also need a FTP client for your computer. We recommend FileZilla. Finally, you need an internet connection to install HENkaku.

tl;dr:

Vita on firmware 3.60
Internet connection
FTP client on your PC
Memory card

Molecule

The Molecule team was the first to hack the Vita and responsible for the majority of the reversing work done on the Vita.

History

HENkaku

On 29/07/2016 HENkaku was released: http://henkaku.xyz/

HENkaku enables homebrew by patching out signature checks (works similar to SceKernelModulemgr#Module_decryption_and_signature_checks). HENkaku uses two kernel vulnerabilities: Vulnerabilities#Heap_use-after-free_in_sceNetSyscallIoctl and Vulnerabilities#sceIoDevctl_does_not_clear_stack_buffer and a usermode webkit vulnerability. HENkaku only works on firmware 3.60, however the kernel vulnerabilities are present in all firmware versions up to and including 3.60.

Rejuvenate

On 14/06/2015, Rejuvenate, which was the first public exploit that allowed to run unsigned usermode code, was released. http://yifan.lu/2015/06/14/rejuvenate-native-homebrew-for-psvita/

Secure Kernel

It was no surprise that crypto processes were not handled by the kernel (such was the case for previous Sony consoles). Libraries that deal with encrypted/signed content (SELF loading, PUP unpacking, etc) all make calls to the Secure World. The hypothesis was that like many large manufacturers at the time, secure world was used for cryptography and security tasks. Getting access to the secure kernel was even harder than non-secure kernel because there was much less exposure and much less information. However, with a vulnerability that abused some lightly documented features of the ARM architecture, the secure kernel was dumped on 06/09/2014, a little less than a year after owning kernel. Unfortunately, almost immediately, the team found that secure kernel was a red herring. There was no keys or any sensitive information in secure world (Sony was wiser here than most other ARM device makers), but the sole task of the secure kernel was to communicate with an external processor which the team named F00D Processor because of the e_machine field of the ELF headers.

Kernel

For about a year research was focused on getting kernel code execution. Through some ingenuity and a lot of luck, on 27/08/2013 the first kernel exploit on the Vita was realized. The vulnerability was an integer overflow leading to a heap overflow and a misconfiguration that allowed a small portion of kernel heap memory to be leaked. The exploit and tools were completed on 01/09/2013 and for the first time, kernel memory was revealed. After a week of dumping the large kernel codebase (there were many factors that made it a slow process), work begin in parallel to reverse the system and find more vulnerabilities.

Userland

On 18/08/2012, a vulnerability was discovered in PSM that allowed both for memory to be dumped and code to be executed.^[1] UVLoader was developed and in a couple of weeks, the first working native code homebrew ran on 12/09/2012. Although the source for UVLoader was released in anticipation for excitement in the homebrew community, there was no serious response from developers. Unfortunately, Sony used the source for UVLoader to secure the system in later updates and make userland code loading a much harder reality.

↑ First memory dump

ROP

In early 2012, the first ROP exploit was achieved through the Web Browser. Memory dumps of the browser were obtained through a disclosed WebKit vulnerability that was not patched because Sony did not use the most up-to-date WebKit version. The same vulnerability allowed ROP code execution. ROPTool was written to make creation and testing of ROP payloads easy.

PSP

Molecule has done some work on PSP in the past. Initial reversing of the PSP Emulator was done by members of Molecule including the first flash0 dump that opened the door for all future PSP emulator hacks.