Vita:Cobra Blackfin

The Cobra Blackfin is a unique peer to peer sharing device which allows users to back up and share their favorite games with friends over an internet network.

Credit largely to the excellent work over at Wololo.net Vita Hacking History guide for this page.

Official description
The Black Fin allows Vita and Vita Slim/Wifi/3G users to share their Vita games over the internet. The Cobra Black Fin Emulator card stores game ISO’s on a Micro SD card and the Black Fin card is then inserted into the Vita/Vita Slim console. When connected to the Black Fin servers, authentication of the Vita game is performed by matching the ISO on your Micro SD card to the same original game running on a peers’ Black Fin reader connected to their PC and the Black Fin servers or friends’ servers.

Why did it fail?

 * The need of using a P2P network was the most problematic one, First, you need to find someone who is sharing the game (so the Black fin dongle with the cartridge inside is active) and there wasn’t a lot of users back then. So the game-sharing library was very small. The P2P was also dangerous as Sony could easily find who you were and possibly sue you for sharing games.
 * The team was sketchy, didn’t send any retail unit to Wololo nor any legit hacking website that asked.
 * The price was too high.

More detailed info
The dongle was pulled off the market soon after the release as the sales didn’t match the team’s expectations. In 2017, the main developer of the Black Fin dongle came forward and leaked the BlackFin software and research notes to the public after not being paid by the Cobra team owner for his hard work. It’s an interesting talk that you can find on Wololo.

Overall the Black fin dongle was an ambitious and impressive piece of hardware, especially given the limited knowledge of the PSVita security system at the time of release.