The Wii U scene has been up in arms over a web browser exploit that was recently leaked (then later on, officially released). Though the files were only recently leaked, Nintendo had already partially patched the exploit in firmware 5.0.

The files are readily available to the public, but won’t do anyone without access to a web server any good (though it’s reasonably easy for anyone to set on up on their local network. If required, some tools will definitely show up). I personally don’t own a Wii U but we all know that leaks hurt any scene more than they help. That being said, since the files are readily available I decided to test them out. On the PC the exploit simply shows up as an empty iframe, but when tested on on the Vita, this exploit appears to put the Vita into an infinite loop on the browser. I made a YouTube video of the exploit in action on my Vita you can watch below.



For those of you reading this on your Vita you can check out the Wii U browser exploit in action by following this link. http://hackinformer.com/p/wiiu/index.html

So what does this mean for the Vita, could a possible native Vita hack come from this? In the hands of the right devs could this lead to the first Vita CFW? Or is it little more than an auto reloading browser?

Don’t get your hopes too high: Fail0verflow had explained a while ago that the reason such exploits can run on the Wii U is because the NX bit is not set within the browser on the Wii U. This, as far as we know, is not the case on the PS Vita (and has been confirmed at least by Yifan Lu here).

Nonetheless, it is interesting to see this Wii U hack running on our beloved handheld, and people might find additional vulnerabilities on the Vita that could make this useful eventually.

Please direct all comments/questions/flames to me on Twitter @heleius or here on the forums. 🙂

Source and downloads: Marionumber1 on bitbucket