The PSVita is not officially released yet, but hackers are already actively looking into it. Developer SKFU, known for his long term involvement in the PS3 scene, just released a tool called PSVita Firmware extractor.
The tool allegedly allows to extract PS Vita firmware version 00.945.040, directly from a PC, which raises a few questions: aren’t these firmwares supposed to be encrypted? Does the tool decrypt the files, or just extract them (encrypted) from the archive? Where do people get access to this firmware (most likely through connections within official PSVita devs)
By comparison, our beloved PSARDumper needed to run on a PSP with Kernel access in order to decrypt the firmware, so I am assuming this will not decrypt files, but I might be completely wrong.
This tool will obviously be useful only to a handful of devs, people who have access to the Vita Firmware (official devs only for now?) and are interested in the hack side of the force… But it surely is an interesting piece of news, especially since the console is not out yet!