Vita:Cobra Blackfin

This device was meant to backup games, but also to share them with other users IE: Piracy.

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

This was a commercially failed project that allowed backing up of games with the twist of being able to share games with other users.

Official description

The Black Fin allows Vita and Vita Slim Wifi and 3G users to share their Vita games over the internet. The Cobra Black Fin Emulator card stores game ISO’s on Micro SD 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 his PC and the Black Fin servers or friends’ servers. You might ask why it is necessary to authenticate the game you wish to play using an original card connected to a server? Vita has a very secure card authentication mechanism, which to date has not been penetrated and is based on secure cryptography. It is unlikely that a direct authentication method which avoids having to use a peer to peer system will appear any time soon. As a result Cobra has designed a unique and cutting edge peer to peer sharing device which allows users to share their favourite games with friends over an internet network. Vast resources have been poured into designing a flash card which is the same size as the original Vita card itself. Yes, the Cobra Black Fin squeezes all of its technology into a card no bigger than a Vita game card with tons of features and packing serious hardware power! When you look at the circuit board design and components used you start to understand the expertise and time required to pull off a design of this magnitude.

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 will disappear soon after the release after the sales didn’t match the team’s expectations and in 2017, the main developer of the Black Fin dongle will come forward and leak the BlackFin research and software to the public after not being paid by the Cobra owner for his hard work. It’s an interesting talk that you can find on Wololo.

Overall the Black fin dongle is an amazing piece of hardware that is impressive on its own with the limited knowledge of the PSVita security system back then.