Sony PSP's with Firmware Version 6.60 and Earlier Can't Access PSN and Certain Web Sites

[Nz17]

Do you still use your PSP to access the mobile version of Facebook? (Some people do.) Well you can't anymore... without doing some work to get things working again! And without going to this effort, you can't use the PlayStation Network (PSN) to buy or download games either. But here's the why and how of fixing it.

You see, late in 2014 there was an attack, an exploit, made publicly known as the Poodle Attack. There is a flaw in the design of SSL 3.0 which basically makes "secure" connections insecure if they are being attacked by someone using the Poodle Attack. Due to this, most Web sites accessed over HTTPS dropped support of SSL to force connections to use the newer and secure TLS.

However, PSP's with version 6.60 and older of the PSP firmware only have support for SSL and no support for TLS. But with the disclosure of the Poodle Attack, security-conscious Web sites dropped support for SSL. Thus if you go to one of these ever-growing-in-number Web sites (such as grc.com, duckduckgo.com, facebook.com, or m.facebook.com) you will be unable to connect with the PSP's Web browser.

Now while this isn't a concern for many PSP owners as most of them don't routinely use their PSP's to connect to Web sites, some do - and more importantly for most PSP owners, you can't use PSN for _anything_ if you don't address this issue. That's right, no browsing PSN, no buying games, downloading DLC, videos, music, or anything through Sony's services and any other site which uses only TLS.

But there is a solution! Surprising many people including myself, Sony issued a firmware update numbered 6.61 for PSP's. This was released on December 12th, 2014. However, if you were to go by the description on the official Sony page about it, you'd never know what it is for. Why? It reads, verbatim,

New for 6.61: System software stability during use of some features has been improved.

There is nothing there about SSL, nothing about TLS, nothing about PSN not working, and nothing about how many Web sites are unreachable on PSP's running anything earlier than 6.61.

Worse yet, due to the generic language of the boilerplate instructions Sony has on its firmware page, it makes it seem like you can just download this update over Wi-Fi and have the PSP automatically apply it or use a UMD to get it. This is not the case! Because all Sony online services dropped support for SSL by December 2014, you can't use the update feature to have the PSP go online to get its update. You'll just get an error message. And you can forget about getting a UMD with the update on it. Production of physical copies of PSP games stopped in North America long ago, and even the latest ones wouldn't have the newest version of the PSP firmware.

Here are some of the errors which I encountered with the 6.60 firmware. I'm posting these here so that if you or anyone you know encounters these errors or warning messages, you'll know you need to fix your PSP by upgrading it to version 6.61 or newer of the firmware.

Here are the error messages:

PSN:
A connection error has occurred. (80435061)
A connection error has occurred. (80431075)

HTTPS Web sites with only a TLS option and no SSL option:
SSL communication cannot be performed. A transmission error has occurred in SSL.

System Update:
Connection to the server failed. A DNS error has occurred. (80410414)

So if you can't use System Update from the menu of the PSP to download and apply the update, what can you do? You'll need to download the firmware using your computer, tablet, etc. and manually transfer the firmware over to your PSP's memory card. Here's how to do that.

1) Download the 6.61 (or newer) firmware. Go to your desktop computer (or other form factor of computer) and visit the official PSP firmware page at [ https://www.playstation.com/en-us/su...m-updates/psp/ ]. There you will find the firmware update. It is about 31 MB in size. It will save with the name "EBOOT.PBP".

2) Get your PSP's memory card hooked up to your computer. This can be accomplished by either connecting the PSP over a USB cable to your computer or by removing the PSP's Memory Stick (its type of memory card) and inserting it into a compatible card reader connected to your PC.

3) You need to make sure the PSP's firmware update is named correctly and is put in the right place on the memory card. These file and directory names are case sensitive and thus must all be written in capital letters. The firmware's file should be named EBOOT.PBP and it should be saved in the PSP/GAME/UPDATE directory. So using Linux/UNIX-style parlance, your file should be named [ /PSP/GAME/UPDATE/EBOOT.PBP ]. On Windows, it might read [ E:\PSP\GAME\UPDATE\EBOOT.PBP ].

4) Remove your PSP's Memory Stick from the PC and return it to your PSP. Be sure to unmount the Memory Stick so that it can finish writing the files and directories (also known as folders) to the memory card so it can be safely removed from the computer system without anything being corrupted by having the card removed while the computer is still trying to write to it. On Windows, this is achieved by right-clicking on the memory card's icon and selecting (depending on which of its icons you use) "Eject" or "Safely Remove". You can find this in the Windows file manager called Windows Explorer, or "My Computer," or by using the USB notification icon in the system tray by the clock. On Mac, drag and drop the icon for the memory card to the trash can - doing so will change the trash can's icon to an eject symbol. On Linux, use your desktop environment's file manager to unmount the memory card (often by just right-clicking its icon and selecting "Unmount" or "Remove") or by using the "unmount" command at the terminal (command prompt). Then just re-insert your memory card into your PSP.

5) Update your PSP to the newest firmware. To do this, do /not/ use the System Update option on the XMB (the "cross-media bar," the user interface of the PSP). For some reason, this will not work. Instead, you must go XMB -> Game -> Memory Stick and then select the Update option where it will be mixed in with all of the games and apps you have loaded on your Memory Stick. It will most likely be located at the top of the listing as the app list tends to be in sequential order by newest-to-oldest.

Then the PSP will reboot into the firmware update app which you loaded onto the memory card. You can then follow the simple prompts to apply the firmware. The actual application of the firmware is rather fast, so you don't need a big charge on your battery to install it. But as always, it is a good idea to have a complete battery charge before going in or running the update while on A/C power so that you don't need to worry about the possibility of losing power and corrupting your console's firmware. While it has only a small chance of occurring, if the partially installed firmware does get corrupted, it might render the PSP un-bootable and you'll have to send it in for repair. However, most of the time if you do run out of power during the update, the console will just "turn itself off" (in reality, it goes into a low-power standby mode) wherein you can then get the unit to an A/C adapter to charge it up. Next time you boot it up after charging, it should still be in standby mode and thus will wake up and pick up where it left off.

Now you are all done and you can reboot your PSP with your newly installed firmware. Once again you will be able to access PSN, over-the-air system updates using Wi-Fi, and any Web pages which use TLS over HTTPS. And don't worry, you can still apply custom firmware to your PSP even if you install the 6.61 version of the official firmware.

You are "back in business" - now enjoy your PSP!

[Jorpho]

I read this post a while ago. FYI, I just connected my PSP Go to my PC for the first time in a while, and Media Go was quite happy to download the update into the unit's internal memory for updating. Easy as pie.

Also, apparently the Playstation Store (in its PSP-accessible form) is officially dead in most of the world.
http://www.destructoid.com/sony-cutt...s-281034.phtml

Now to see if I can install the 6.61 CFW without bricking anything.

[Nz17]

Believe it or not, but it is /better/ to install the custom firmware without first installing the official firmware these days. The reason is that today's custom firmware integrates all of the functionality of the official firmware without you needing to install the official firmware at all, and without the official stuff, you don't get cut out of the convenient ways the unofficial stuff can be loaded, nor have some of your changes reverted by the official firmware. But I am glad to hear that updating the PSP Go was so easy for you. Too bad SONY doesn't make Media Go available for anything but Microsoft Windows - it leaves everyone that doesn't use it such as Mac and Linux users in the dark... well, it leaves them with less easy pathways to update their hardware.

Speaking of which, once the PSP PSN storefront goes dark, how will people load up their purchases onto their PSP's?

[megasdkirby]

Through a PS3, I guess.

I wont upgrade because I fear of loosing CFW capabilities.

[Jorpho]

Believe it or not, but it is /better/ to install the custom firmware without first installing the official firmware these days. The reason is that today's custom firmware integrates all of the functionality of the official firmware without you needing to install the official firmware at all, and without the official stuff, you don't get cut out of the convenient ways the unofficial stuff can be loaded, nor have some of your changes reverted by the official firmware.

I suppose so. That didn't occur to me until it was too late. The 6.61 PRO C2 firmware installed without problems anyway. (I should add that in my searching everyone seemed to be quite oblivious to this TLS matter, so good on you for pointing that out.)

By the way, there's no convenient way to sort the games in the PSP menu, is there? I found many references to something called the "PSP Game Structure Utility", but when I finally found a working download link on some Russian site, it proved to be quite underwhelming; the utility only provides the semi-random unidentifiable names of the folders in the PSP\GAME subdirectory of the PSP's internal storage, meaning I'd have to manually match up each folder name with each game.

Speaking of which, once the PSP PSN storefront goes dark, how will people load up their purchases onto their PSP's?

Media Go again, I presume. I suppose that would kind of leave Mac users in the dark, unless it runs under Wine or something.

[Nz17]

Then it is going to be a sad day for those that "walk the straight and narrow" when these official means of loading software onto the PSP are also cut off in a few years' time.

Myself? I find moral justification in the mantra, "If you bought it, then you own it." So when SONY cuts off all official ways of loading software onto the PSP, I will use unofficial means to load and play the software which I purchased.

[fahlim003]

So in the year 2016 I want to go online with my PSP, well, access PSN. Based on the info from nz17 if I upgrade to 6.60 OFW it should be ok? I'm presently on 5.50 Gen-D3 and I was getting the old 80431075 error and was unable to link the DLC content for Gran Turismo PSP. My understanding was that you cannot bounce around firmwares, although its been a while since I last did it.

I probably last went online 3 years ago, perhaps more, but its just to sign in and authorize that the accounts are the same as there is no other way to use the 5 DLC cars that for some reason are still on PSN, hence why upon recently finding GT PSP I decided to get them.

[Nz17]

Yes, with the latest official or custom firmware, you can take the PSP online and use PSN such as for purchasing or downloading or authenticating. I recommend the custom firmware as it has all of the good abilities of the official firmware without all of the restriction that go with the OFW.

[fahlim003]

I attempted to update using the OFW and apparently its not possible since it reads "you have 9.90 and do not need to update". Well, that's a relief as apparently it is a typo in the version.txt so I'll need to modify that.

Edit: Alright, got up to OFW 6.61 then loaded the 6.61 CFW with the IPL flasher and we're good to go. Still able to access PSN without issue and the ability to change between OFW/CFW is a nice change.

[Baloo]

Five years later and I am posting to say that PSPs still have this problem even on the 6.61 firmware. The web browser effectively doesnt work because it cannot complete the TLS handshake encryption to the website. So the ability to use RSS feeds on PSP is effectively dead. Does anyone know if CFW has fixed this issue?

On a separate but related note, you can still use Shoutcast Radio on PSP if that is your fancy, by going to pspradio.co.uk in the web browser. It will download a Shoutcast Internet Radio applet that still works in 2021. Just some fun for anyone interested.

[gbpxl]

My PSP has CFW and Ive never been able to go online with it.