Yifan Lu, the self-styled 'reverse engineer' attempting to write a loader enabling Vita to run homebrew software, has stressed that his efforts won't allow consumers to play pirate retail games.

Speaking to an indie Vita developer on Twitter, he said it's "physically impossible to decrypt or load retail games with my exploit".
It was then put to him by the developer that his exploit will represent "an open door. Not for you, but for people who want to destroy us".

This is a possibility that Lu acknowledged in an interview with PlayStation Lifestyle.

"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 told the site.

"However, it takes a lot of skills to find such an exploit, 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."

On his stance regarding piracy, Lu reiterated: "I am 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)."

Lu also said that he's only "at the very early" stages of being able to run homebrew on Vita. "The first step in fact. This means that readers will have to wait at least a couple of months before they can even see any demo at all."

Posted: Sep 07, 2012 10:50 am

Source: http://www.computerandvideogames.com/367057/vita-hack-doesnt-let-you-play-pirate-retail-games/