Warning: You might brick your controller! (Do this at your own discretion.)

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Preamble

About a month ago, Sony decided to forgo their still-functional Firmware Updater Tool (you get a "can't connect to the server" message and it doesn't let you download the firmware) and replace it with the PlayStation Accessories app.

This new app does not run on wine at all from what I can see, so I decided to try and get the previous tool (I'll call it FWUpdater) working again.

PlayStation Accessories, on launch, connects to playstation's server (https://fwupdater.dl.playstation.net/fwupdater/info.json) and checks if it's version is up-to-date, then checks if there is a new firmware for the controllers. As it seems, FWUpdater uses the same URL to check its version as well. As these are completely different programs, and the server reports the latest version for PlayStation Accessories only, FWUpdater gets confused and just displays "can't connect to the server" (correct me if I'm wrong).

After some experimentation, I figured out I could just spoof the version reported from the server (with mitmproxy) and get FWUpdater to fetch the necessary firmware.

Prerequisites

• Python
• Wine
• Browser
• Terminal-feet

Process

Step 1: mitmproxy

a. Install mitmproxy from your package manager (or grab the latest binaries from mitmproxy.org and open a terminal in the mitmproxy folder.)

b. Run mitmweb, this should launch a web UI in your browser:

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c. Select File in the upper left corner and then Install certificates. This will open up another page:

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d. Setup your browser (in the browser setting) to connect to mitmproxy:

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e. Reload the previous page and you should see the certificates for various platforms:

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f. Download the Linux certificate and install them to your system trust store, following the instructions on the above page for your specific distro (for Arch Linux, you move the certificate into /etc/ca-certificates/trust-source/anchors/).

g. Revert the proxy settings in your browser.

Step 2: FWUpdater

a. Download the FWUpdater and extract it.

b. Create a new empty file, paste this in and save it as a python script (.py).

from mitmproxy import ctx from mitmproxy import http import json

def response(flow: http.HTTPFlow) -> None: if flow.request.pretty_url.endswith("/fwupdater/info.json"): data = json.loads(flow.response.get_text()) data["ApplicationLatestVersion"] = "1.5.0.2" flow.response.text = json.dumps(data)

b. Start mitmproxy in a terminal with the script:

mitmproxy -s "path/to/the/above/script.py"

c. Start FWUpdater with the following command:

HTTP_PROXY="http://localhost:8080/" wine "path/to/FWUpdater.exe"

d. Profit.

Hope this helps (And I hope I didn't miss anything lmao)

Transcript

Image of Anakin Skywalker (Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith) on the left as he yells "From my point of view, the Jedi are evil!" but with text on the right that states "From my point of view, the chicken came first."

Smaller text in the lower right corner that states "I will not be debating this."

HQ Templates for your personal needs: ! ! ! !