A major break through has been made in the world of homebrew, and it would now appear that running unsigned software may no longer require PSP owners to own Grand Theft Auto.

Straight from the horses mouth (Noobz) :

Following the publication of a new proof of concept TIFF vulnerability by NOPx86, a team of PSP developers has been working hard to turn it into an opening for homebrew on the PSP. We’re pleased to announce that the wait is over, with the release of a Hello World demo that runs on all PSP firmwares that are capable of viewing TIFF images!

You can see a photo of it in action here. Alternatively, you can click here to download it and see for yourself!

To install, just unpack the ZIP file to your PSP’s PHOTO folder, and then attempt to view hello_world.tif. Hello World will launch automatically. You may find that occasionally the full screen doesn’t show – this is a known problem, just restart your PSP by holding the power button until it turns off, then open the image again. To quit, hold the power button until the PSP turns off.

So what happens next? This shows that we can run code via this exploit. It won’t be too hard to develop an eLoader that can use this exploit on v2.0 – v2.6. v2.7+ will be harder, due to extra security, but will happen a little later. Kernel mode is unavailable on v2.8, but it is likely that a downgrader is possible on all other firmwares. But then, with the possibility of kernel homebrew running without the need for a game UMD, why would you need to downgrade?

Full credit is given in the Hello World, but repeated here: Thanks to NOPx86 for the initial proof of concept on the x86 processor, and psp250, Skylark, Joek2100, CSwindle, JimP and Fanjita for the PSP work. Thanks also to Ditlew, HarleyG and our families for general support during this work.

So great news indeed for PSP owners who are running firmware versions 2.5+ who don’t want to downgrade their PSP to be able to play homebrew software, and even better news for those who didn’t want to have to buy GTA just to have access to the eLoader.

Its great to see that the developers are still working hard at finding working exploits for the PSP even with the recent downgrader being made available for PSP owners running firmware 2.5/2.6 (excluding TA-082 motherboards).

I’ll be watching this latest development carefully, as having to use the eLoader via GTA was my main reason for downgrading my PSP to firmware 1.5. If this latest exploit means that I can run the homebrew software easily from the XMB, I may consider upgrading back to 2.6.