Cosmo3DS: YifanLu releases new CFW for 3DS, introduces “cleaner” CFW concepts

A few hours ago hacker YifanLu released Cosmo3DS, a barebone 3DS Custom Firmware that ships withemuNAND and allows the user to switch their 3DS region at will. It also gives the user access to any region’s eShop.

Specifically, Cosmo3DS matches the following requirements from YifanLu:

• Keep my 3DS on the hackable 9.2 firmware but still use the latest system software (emuNAND)
• Play games region free right from the home menu
• Change the system region without possibly bricking the device
• Use the eShop with region changed systems

Yifanlu emphasizes that this Customer firmware does not enable piracy, but that’s not the interesting part of this relase:

Cosmo3DS is built on top of the concept that YifanLu introduced recently about a “cleaner” way of writing Custom Firmwares for the 3DS. Yifanlu claims (and basically demonstrates in his articles) that 3DS Custom Firmwares today are written in an inefficient way. They use resources, and make further modding difficult.

Cosmo3DS is built around an entirely rewritten “Loader”, which handles code injection on the 3DS in a much more clean, centralized and controlled way. I’ll let you read Yifan’s article for details. What this means to the end user though is that Cosmo3DS could be the base for much more moddable Custom Firmware in the future. Cleaner code could lead to more customizations for your 3DS. Yifanlu mentions the possibility to see a “homebrew” button in the menu, custom keyboards, or more advanced custom themes.

I believe that using a custom “loader” will make it much easier to write mods for the 3DS. We could see hacks such as a “Homebrew” button in the Home Menu or custom keyboards or custom themes outside of what Nintendo officially supports. We might also see hacks for games similar to HANS but without requiring access to a dump of the game. I hope 3DS developers will pick up on this and make cool mods and hacks for the system.

Having been on the console scene for 10 years now, I can relate to Yifan’s observation about the quality of the code in homebrew in general. The hacking scene is made of people with many skills, and not all of us have a degree in software engineering. For those of us with a computer science background, the lack of quality can be a bit frustrating, and I think this is where Yifanlu is coming from. Back in the days, I’ve worked on PSP hacks with people who cared more about their variable naming conventions than a good long term design to make the project maintainable and scalable. This was annoying (and I believe the other dude was frustrated too to be honest. It’s not always easy working on software projects with people from various backgrounds)

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On the PSP scene, there used to be a great resource for people looking to collaborate on hacks and build clean stuff (ps2dev.org, now dead). I’m not exactly sure why and how things went so well there, but the people who drove the tech discussions on the PSP back then were building really clean stuff (the PSP SDK comes to mind). It seems to me modern console scenes are having a hard time reaching that level of quality. But maybe I’m just not seeing it. Either way, here’s to YifanLu’s new CFW, and hoping this will bring good news to the scene moving forward!

A few hours ago hacker YifanLu released Cosmo3DS, a barebone 3DS Custom Firmware that ships withemuNAND and allows the user to switch their 3DS region at will. It also gives the user access to any region’s eShop.

Specifically, Cosmo3DS matches the following requirements from YifanLu:

• Keep my 3DS on the hackable 9.2 firmware but still use the latest system software (emuNAND)
• Play games region free right from the home menu
• Change the system region without possibly bricking the device
• Use the eShop with region changed systems

Yifanlu emphasizes that this Customer firmware does not enable piracy, but that’s not the interesting part of this relase:

Cosmo3DS is built on top of the concept that YifanLu introduced recently about a “cleaner” way of writing Custom Firmwares for the 3DS. Yifanlu claims (and basically demonstrates in his articles) that 3DS Custom Firmwares today are written in an inefficient way. They use resources, and make further modding difficult.

Cosmo3DS is built around an entirely rewritten “Loader”, which handles code injection on the 3DS in a much more clean, centralized and controlled way. I’ll let you read Yifan’s article for details. What this means to the end user though is that Cosmo3DS could be the base for much more moddable Custom Firmware in the future. Cleaner code could lead to more customizations for your 3DS. Yifanlu mentions the possibility to see a “homebrew” button in the menu, custom keyboards, or more advanced custom themes.

I believe that using a custom “loader” will make it much easier to write mods for the 3DS. We could see hacks such as a “Homebrew” button in the Home Menu or custom keyboards or custom themes outside of what Nintendo officially supports. We might also see hacks for games similar to HANS but without requiring access to a dump of the game. I hope 3DS developers will pick up on this and make cool mods and hacks for the system.

Having been on the console scene for 10 years now, I can relate to Yifan’s observation about the quality of the code in homebrew in general. The hacking scene is made of people with many skills, and not all of us have a degree in software engineering. For those of us with a computer science background, the lack of quality can be a bit frustrating, and I think this is where Yifanlu is coming from. Back in the days, I’ve worked on PSP hacks with people who cared more about their variable naming conventions than a good long term design to make the project maintainable and scalable. This was annoying (and I believe the other dude was frustrated too to be honest. It’s not always easy working on software projects with people from various backgrounds)

On the PSP scene, there used to be a great resource for people looking to collaborate on hacks and build clean stuff (ps2dev.org, now dead). I’m not exactly sure why and how things went so well there, but the people who drove the tech discussions on the PSP back then were building really clean stuff (the PSP SDK comes to mind). It seems to me modern console scenes are having a hard time reaching that level of quality. But maybe I’m just not seeing it. Either way, here’s to YifanLu’s new CFW, and hoping this will bring good news to the scene moving forward!

Download Cosmo3DS

You can Download Cosmo3DS from YifanLu’s github. There’s no end-user “easy” installation process at this point so follow the instructions below if you feel inclined to:

If you want to use it, you need the CFW as well as the custom loader. Then, the important part is injecting the custom loader into the right FIRM file. (If you search for “reinand 3.1 firmware.bin pastebin” you should be able to find it)

Source: YifanLu on twitter

Yifan Lu’s hardware fundraiser: the scene donation drive that reached its goal in less than 24h

You might have seen YifanLu’s hardware fundraiser on our forums. Yesterday, the famous Vita hacker who gave us native vita homebrew just asked for the community’s help.

His goal: understand the Vita’s security processor in depth.

Although YifanLu couldn’t give too many details on what he’ll use the money for, he explained he needed $1400 to secure a deal with some legit entity that could provide us additional information about the Vita CPU.

Without sharing too many details, I need to emphasize that Yifanlu has insisted on the fact that this approach could lead to nowhere, for many reasons. The seller could decide to not proceed with the deal, or the information we gather could end up being useless for decrypting anything related to the Vita. from what I gathered, there are more reasons this could fail than succeed.

Yeah, those of you who pay attention to detail will know this isn’t a Vita CPU ;)

From YifanLu’s post:

•  This deal is 100% legal. It is not in the black or gray market. We are not paying a bribe or blackmail or anything shady. The money is not going to Sony (we’re not buying a devkit or registering to be a developer). We are not buying potentially stolen parts from Foxconn factories. Everything is completely clean, or I wouldn’t even be considering it.
• The intentional vagueness comes from the fact that this approach of information gathering (as far as I know) has never been attempted before. If Sony finds out, they might find a way to stop the deal. If the other party sees this as something controversial, they will likely back out to avoid any trouble/press.
• EVEN if I get all the money, they might still back out of the deal. In that case, I will refund everyone in full.
• EVEN if the deal goes through, the information we gather from it may be useless. In that case, we would lose the bet, and the money is gone.
• If the information does turn out to be helpful; because of the sensitive nature of it, we will share it with a small group of vita hackers for the time being. However, I promise that no later than a year from now, any information we get not subject to NDA will be released.

What’s interesting here is how fast YifanLu was able to gather the $1400 from our community. Within less than 24h, the goal was reached. Apparently some big donator has been lurking on the Vita scene  It also shows that YifanLu has given enough to the scene that we know we can trust him with this kind of thing.

Although there is absolutely no guarantee at this point that this could lead to anything useful, this is overall good news for the scene, let’s see what happens next!

Rejuvenate hack compatible with the PSM Dev Assistant for Unity, could open many doors including PSTV support

YifanLu just announced that the Rejuvenate hack is likely to be compatible with the PSM Dev assistant for Unity. That app, which is similar to the PSM Dev Assistant that was required for Rejuvenate, brings some additional features that the hack can leverage.

First of all, the PSM For unity app can be debugged over wifi. This means that through this app, it could be possible to run Rejuvenate without a USB connection. As a result, it also potentially brings PSTV compatibility with the hack.

Secondly, the PSM for unity app apparently isn’t DRMed, and does not require a license. This is probably a big announcement right here: people who did not register for the PSM dev portal now have a chance at getting the hack moving forward. Installing the pkg file will require access to the package installer app (tough given that this app has been made difficult to access quite a while ago) or to a PS3 (this one should be easier?)

This is all of course assuming you are still on firmware 3.51! Firmware 3.52 blocked access to these apps, and will not work with Rejuvenate.

(logo credits: egarrote from elotrolado.net)

YifanLu stated that more work is of course required to port Rejuvenate and the exploit (VitaDefiler) to the PSM Unity app. Sadly, he lacks the time to actually work on this, and is calling for help to the scene. Everything is open source, so people with the required skills should be able to do this.

On my end, I have some amount of work to do in order to release PSM+. PSM+ is a system that will allow people who have the PSM App installed, but no publisher license, to run homebrews. PSM+ is not my work, it is a combined work from TomTomdu80, Mr.Gas, and YifanLu. However I am hosting it on this site, and because some of the steps are CPU intensive, I have to tread carefully. Bear with me as I gather the required time to launch this.

Source and details: Yifanlu

PS Vita Firmware 3.52 is out, revokes PSM support, effectively patching the Rejuvenate hack (do not update!)

PS Vita firmware 3.52 is out, and it patches the Rejuvenate hack, by revoking PSM from the device.

If you are running the Rejuvenate hack, or are hoping to run it, do not update to firmware 3.52. This “stability” update has the only goal of blocking the recently released native hack.
Just like many other stability updates on the PS vita, the sole goal of this update is to slow down the hacking scene, and this will not bring any stability whatsoever. Add it to the pile of updates Sony released only for the sake of the scene 

For those of you who do not have a publisher’s license but have the PSM Dev App installed, we’re still figuring out the timing to release PSM+, the tools that will let you run Rejuvenate without a publisher’s license (some details here).

It is important at this point that as many people as possible stay on 3.51 or lower. A significant amount of people running the Rejuvenate hack could make a huge difference in how lively the PS vita scene will become in the months to come. I have lots of things to announce to follow up on the hack release, unfortunately the timing is not perfect on my end as I just switched jobs and don’t have the time I want to spend on this. Please bear with me.

Do NOT update to 3.52 if you ever want to run Rejuvenate. Even if you can't download/use PSM DevAssistant, hold off on 3.52 for now!

— Yifan (@yifanlu) June 24, 2015

.@heleius Basically they revoked PSM. Sorry to any PSM dev who wanted to fix bugs in their games before the deadline.

— Yifan (@yifanlu) June 24, 2015

Our friend Heleius at hackinformer stated that other, undisclosed hacks, including ePSP hacks, are still working on this firmware, confirming that the Rejuvenate hack was the only target for this update.

Vita Hack Rejuvenate – How to run your first homebrew

The vita hack Rejuvenate was released this week, and is the very first native hack for the PS Vita. People might be confused as to what they need in order to run their homebrews, so here’s some quick how to.

Requirements to run Vita Hack – Rejuvenate

• you need to be approved as a PSM Publisher. If you’re not a PSM Publisher, a friend of yours with a PSM publisher license can generate the required keys for you (see official documentation). If you don’t have friends, stay tuned: ways to bypass this limitation will be revealed soon.
• The current version of Rejuvenate works on Vita firmwares 3.00 to 3.51 included
• You need the PSM Dev Assistant app installed on your PS Vita. Compatible versions are 1.11, 1.14, 1.15
• The tools require a Windows computer for now
• Because of the need to have a USB connection to your Vita to run homwbres, Rejuvenate is not compatible with the PS TV as of today.

you need to have the following software:

• Rejuvenate 0.2
• .NET Framework 2.0
• .NET Framework 4.0
• Visual C++ 2008 Redistributable
• Visual C++ 2010 Redistributable
• PSM_SDK_1.21.02.exe (333MB) (installation for that last one is not required, you only need the files!)

Install and Run your first Rejuvenate homebrew

Please note that YifanLu is providing all the steps as clearly as can be in his readme, with several troubleshooting steps that we reproduce below.Read those if you run into an issue and before asking for help, this could save you lots of time!

1. make sure you have the prerequisites installed (see above)
2. Extract the Rejuvenate 0.2 zip to a folder on your windows computer.
3. Copy  PSM_SDK_1.21.02.exe to the current directory and runSETUP.BAT. Follow the instructions. You will need to do this only once. The setup will:
   1. Extract the PSM SDK
   2. Install the PSM Driver (this will require admin permission)
   3. Ask you to enter your PSM Dev Assistant version number (reminder, this is currently only compatible with 1.11, 1.14, 1.15)
4. Connect your PS Vita to your PC, and run the PSM Dev Assistant.
5. To run homebrew, drag your homebrew elf file INTO “run_homebrew.bat” (as of now, only the provided “Hello World” file works)
   1. Note: I initially got a “connection error” when doing this. Running the “Ballblaze” Demo through the PSM Dev Assistant, then trying again, seemed to “unblock” the issue

And you’re good to go!