Sony’s been rather vigilant when it comes to combating hacks on the PS Vita so far, pulling an exploitable PSP game from the PS Store a day before the first Vita hack was even made public – even though it ran entirely inside the PSP emulator. To that end, developer Hellcat has discovered that the PS3 when connected to a PS Vita, downloads a list of content IDs direct from PSN.

http://vitacl.ww.dl.playstation.net/vitacl/ww/j/version.dat
http://vitacl.xx.dl.playstation.net/vitacl/xx/j/list.dat

While the actual contents of the file are unknown as it is encrypted with an SCE header, it’s likely that any content transfers are cross-referenced against this list to determine validity. It’s not clear if it is a blacklist or whitelist, however. If the latter, that would give Sony more control over what’s allowed and what isn’t. Technically, once this list is downloaded to your Vita, Sony could potentially cut off access to applications or games that aren’t on the allowed list – either for compatibility or security reasons. At any rate, it’s an interesting find.

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