PS4 - The State of Things Part I: TitleID's [#1 Update]

Yeah I'm still here! A lot of information was collected, analyzed and misused in the past months. I want to share an overview with you and I'll start with "Part I: TitleID's".

This post is not entirely about the PS4, it will include some information about the PSV as well.

Why are we interested in TitleID's?

Both the PS4 and the PSV use the known system of TitleID's to identify games and apps. Most of them are visible to you via either the Livearea on PSV or the menu of the PS4.

Some of them, on the other hand are only used as references for internal modules or similar and are therefore hidden. The most interesting ones are those which are linked with applications you shall not see and are just implemented for tests, were forgotten or exist for other unknown reasons. Do we want to find and start them? Yes, we do!

How do we find valid TitleID's?

Well, the best start is to look at the error reports of the consoles. Once a game or app crashes, a small error report is generated and you can view this information via the systems settings. You'll see that the TitleID is always with it.

NPXS19999 is the TitleID

Surely this will not lead us to any interesting hidden applications since those are most likely never active and can not be crashed without even knowing how to start them, but it will give us a good startpoint since the range of commonly used system ID's is huge (NPXS00000-NPXS9999). So now we need a way to test for valid ID's aka a possibility to launch games/apps by it's TitleID with bruteforcing.

How do we start apps/games by TitleID's?

PS VITA Method: [UPDATED]

[UPDATE]

For simplicity here's a small webform which will unlock the PKG Installer for your PS VITA: http://www.zload.net/pkg/ kindly hosted by The Zett. Just enter the E-Mail adress you use on your PSV and the script will send you the unlock E-Mail.

[/UPDATE]

On PlayStation VITA there are many ways to achieve our goal, so it's not important right now if one is public. I will show you the most simple one. Probably you have noticed the leak of information regarding a hidden PKG installer a few months ago - this was achieved by using this technique.

Simply as it is, the only thing you have to do is setup the E-Mail client application on your PlayStation VITA and write yourself an HTML E-Mail with the following content to receive the E-Mail on your PSV.

<a href="psgm:open?titleid=NPXS10031">OPEN PKG INSTALLER</a>

Open your E-Mail app and click the link and the PKG installer will start. You may want to replace the titleid parameter with any of your choice. I have a small list of tested TitleID's for PSV right here, feel free to add or modify information.

PS4 Method:

For the PlayStation 4 our method is a bit more complicated and requires a bit of RE knowledge for Android and/or iOS. I'll describe an example for Android:

Please grab a copy of the Metal Gear Solid V: GZ companion app for Android and save the APK on your PC. APK Downloader is useful here! ( It's a fantastic game, I'm rly sorry I had to use this one :( )

Now you'll need the APK-Multi-Tool. Setup the tool and place the MGS companion APK file in the "place-apk-here-for-modding" folder. Start the tool, via the "Script.bat" and choose option 9 to decompile the APK. You now have a decompiled copy of the APK in your "projects" folder.

Locate the "PS4Net$1.smali" source file in "/smali/jp/konami/mgsvgzapp/", open it and replace the MGS V: GZ TitleID's with one of your choice and save the file. Go back to the APK-Multi-Tool script and choose option 15 (assuming your Android phone connected in debugger mode).

Now you can start the app on your phone, choose the main option and it will find your PS4 after you logged in PSN. Once started, normally the application would start Metal Gear Solid V: GZ, but now tries to start your TitleID if available.

The authentication system used for the secure communication between your phone and your PS4 is well done, but sadly not useful if we use a modification like this. Feel free to join the list of tested TitleID's for PS4.

For obvious reasons I made a small TitleID's launcher to test different ID's a lot faster.

XBOX ONE Method:

In the APK described in the PS4 method you might have noticed that there is code for the XBOX ONE version of the game as well. Nearly same system, have fun.


Stay tuned for Part II!

Best regards,

- SKFU