Crafty Gamer Hacks a PlayStation TV to Run PlayStation Vita Games Using Email Exploit

pcappdate. Some gamer must have been really annoyed by Sony not allowing PlayStation (PS) Vita games to be played on PlayStation TVs, so annoyed that it drove him to find a bug in the PS TV code that he could exploit to grant him the ability to play Vita games.

PlayStation Vita is Sony's latest generation handheld gaming console, which comes with the ability to play specially-designed games, some of which use innovative features like the Vita's camera, rear touchpad, and its gesture and tilting engine to play games on the go.

While not all games utilize these features, Sony went on to implement a controversial whitelist for their PlayStation TV microconsole that would prevent Vita games from being played on it, a decision which our technical users might see the point of implementing.

The problem was that not all Vita games used these features, and some users felt annoyed by the fact that they could not load a Vita game on their PS TV and play it from there, if it was clearly not utilizing the handheld console's touch, motion, and camera features.

The exploit targets the PlayStation TV's email app

This is what probably drove a gamer (hacker) that goes under the name of mr.gas on the HackInformer forums, to create a simple exploit that targets the PS TV's email app, exploit which removes the controversial whitelist.

This was done by sending an email that has a malicious .dat file attachment, along with a specially crafted email subject line. When the PS TV email app receives this message and tries to open the attached file, it crashes, and by doing so leaves the door open for a firmware modification.

mr.gas exploited this bug to remove the PS TV's whitelist, allowing him to load and play Vita games on his PS TV console.

Only works with PlayStation TV firmware version 3.52

As other gamers around the Web experimented with this workaround, they found out that most of the Vita games that don't use the rear touchpad and tilting features will work on the PS TV. An updated list of all Vita <-> TV compatible games can be found on the PS Vita Reviews website.

The exploit is temporary though, users that have connected to the PlayStation Network confirming that after doing so, they needed to resend the exploit email again.

For now, the exploit only works for the 3.52 version of the PS TV firmware. If you'd like to keep using this trick, just don't update past this version.

Two proof-of-concept videos can be seen below: