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Console Hacks - Patient Zero of Piracy and Cheats
- Thread starter McNum
- Start date
I don't think you understand the concept of white hat hacking if you think it should be all about selling your information for profit rather than open-sourcing it to help others understand the nature of current and future vulnerabilities.
Anyway, a question to everyone who seems opposed to system modification in every case: when I get a Switch, I would love to be able to modify it to run ScummVM so I can play CD backups of classic games I own like Monkey Island and Fate of Atlantis on the go, and for other similar uses that have nothing to do with piracy, cheating in online games, or anything of the sort. Is that really such a bad thing?
PSX was one of consoles where piracy was rampant and we still got so many great gems. DS allowed piracy and we got a lof of titles. PS2 too. PS3 too.
I dont really believe that software support depends on piracy. On PC I could download Frostpunk if I would want. Still sold 200k in just 66 hours.
Vermintide 2 is at over 1M on PC.
I dunno, I feel it's pretty insulting to actual victims (of rape, racism, etc.) to use this term to refer to multinational corporations. You are dilluting its meaning into nothingness.
I think a better term to describe what you take issue with is simply post-hoc rationalization: "I want to hack this thing, so let me think up a list of plausible reasons why I'm doing it".
You should learn more about the ecosystems surrounding piracy and the way security research works. It's interesting stuff, and you wouldn't be surprised by the name of household name like that anymore. I say this without insult intended, I genuinely mean it.
Yeah, there's nothing anyone other than Nintendo can do about online security. They need to implement systems that validate consoles prior to allowing access to online play. Hire people who have done this successfully in the past and give them free reign to do what they will. Online isn't necessarily surrendered yet. With the right talent, it can be protected.
I think we can move on from this point since OP already made a decent and gracious apology that made it pretty clear they understand why it wasn't an appropriate term to use in this context.
They know what systems connect to their servers and what they do (and what they own), if there are malicious actors stupid enough to connect to the internet, then they'll risk a very likely ban. Packet studies on the Switch have showed it does extensive telemetry, and you're either going to be turning that off (red flag) or trying to fake it (red flag, and impossible with enough data calls as things eventually won't align server side vs. client side).
Hell, they'll know if Pin 10 is always grounded and could potentially ban off of just that if they were so inclined, and they'll know if you're on T214 or T210, and they'll know the SBK derivative of your ID and start blacklisting that if they so desire. We don't know if they can detect CFW but, given their recent forays into banning 3DSes, they probably have methods.
Their changes from the 3DS to the Switch are fairly extensive, even the CDN authentication was completely redone. All online authentication is now server side over four different servers for different things, the only non-auth communication now is downloading system updates... for obvious reasons.
I think anyone can see that the flaws are Nintendo and nVidias fault - but on the subject of lawful and ethical...
What's ethical about breaking a software eco-system and providing the means to shatter crypto for a device - when its done for the notoriety?
If it damages legitimate sales - and it probably will - I cannot see releasing the details of this exploit as ethical. It might be what these groups do, and the blame for its coming into being might well lie squarely with the companies behind the product, but its not an ethical thing to my mind.
Again, if we're making health analogies - is this not like finding an anti-biotic resistant bacteria that affects a particular set of people, and then giving people the recipe or sample for that bacteria to the Internet at large?
You can argue it would always be released, and that might be the case, but to me - the choice to do so is a deliberate one and the earlier its done, the longer lasting the effect.
What's ethical about breaking a software eco-system and providing the means to shatter crypto for a device - when its done for the notoriety?
If it damages legitimate sales - and it probably will - I cannot see releasing the details of this exploit as ethical. It might be what these groups do, and the blame for its coming into being might well lie squarely with the companies behind the product, but its not an ethical thing to my mind.
Again, if we're making health analogies - is this not like finding an anti-biotic resistant bacteria that affects a particular set of people, and then giving people the recipe or sample for that bacteria to the Internet at large?
You can argue it would always be released, and that might be the case, but to me - the choice to do so is a deliberate one and the earlier its done, the longer lasting the effect.
Yeah, I messed up on that, didn't know how specific it was. Sorry, won't do it again.
In a vacuum, no. But the same method you use for SummVM and Monkey Island (fine taste in games, I might add), can also be used for less friendly code. And that's my main problem. As I said, I'd be okay with an exploit that didn't allow for cheats and piracy, but unless a homebrew tool was made so it explicitly banned that, I just don't see it as safe. The bad comes with the good. I wish we could only get the good, or the system remained un-hacked.
The cost of people working in those programs to prevent insecurities or the cost of piracy? Because them "not liking" said programs is already telling enough. If the insecurity is found by someone who helps the provider of the hardware to close it then he simultaniously prevents exploits for malicious and non malicious purposes. If he just tells everyone whats up then he opens it up for both.
Again, I'm not even saying that this is a black and white issue, but that your doctor comparison doesn't make any sense. None of this applies to a doctor and his doings.
And yes, there is no "mechanism to care". Morality as a human concept is dwindling in times of the internet for sure, but it's still a thing.
Switch telemetry is non-interesting. It's nothing like what you see on the Xbox One or even the 360. It will not be a problem.
That will also not be a problem. And their 3DS banning stuff is exactly the reason for the concern - it is amateur, trivial to defeat nonsense.
It's incentive to hack it. What's wrong with people wanting more features out of the product they buy?
I'm not sure if I contribute meaningful to the discussion or not but I like to hack my devices, albeit under specific circumstances. I'm not really interested in hacking my Switch, though if I could run Android or Linux on it as a dualboot without compromising the Nintendo OS I would do it in a heartbeat. Otherwise I would hack the Nintendo OS if it wouldn't compromise my online experience (getting banned) if it would allow me to alter the UI. Let me add a wallpaper to my Switch, let me add a menu-music, change colors and so on.
That's also the reason I still jailbreak my iPhones. If Apple would give me FULL control over the iOS UI like I have with Anemone and a few other tweaks I would have no need to jailbreak my phones. I know Android has this openness by default but I do not like the OS-experience of Android, a fully UI customized iOS device is exactly what I want.
In general I don't really care about emulators and Homebrew anymore as I did in the past. Yes I did hack my new 3DS to be the ultimate emulator-machine for all my retro-games and I love it along with the custom-made theme I have but I could have just as well gotten a GPD Win for that. The thing is with the new 3DS I didn't have to make any sacrifices and got a nice Nintendo GUI to boot so I did it but generally if a devices and company allows me FULL UI customization 99% of my own reasons to hack things would vanish. I'm very well aware that I'm a extreme minority and outlier here though. I'm a UI/UX person first and foremost.
That's also the reason I still jailbreak my iPhones. If Apple would give me FULL control over the iOS UI like I have with Anemone and a few other tweaks I would have no need to jailbreak my phones. I know Android has this openness by default but I do not like the OS-experience of Android, a fully UI customized iOS device is exactly what I want.
In general I don't really care about emulators and Homebrew anymore as I did in the past. Yes I did hack my new 3DS to be the ultimate emulator-machine for all my retro-games and I love it along with the custom-made theme I have but I could have just as well gotten a GPD Win for that. The thing is with the new 3DS I didn't have to make any sacrifices and got a nice Nintendo GUI to boot so I did it but generally if a devices and company allows me FULL UI customization 99% of my own reasons to hack things would vanish. I'm very well aware that I'm a extreme minority and outlier here though. I'm a UI/UX person first and foremost.
I'm sorry, I am just not going to spend an hour and a half to explain how security research works. You are advocating for researchers to act on behalf of the companies interests alone, and that's just not how the world works or how it should.
It is also irrelevant in this case - a malicious actor (Team-Xecuter) had discovered the vuln before most others, weaponized it and had announced their intentions to use it to sell a piracy enabling device. At that point, covering up the flaw is not an option.
This I do understand.. but in terms of what it means for players invested in the Switch eco-system, what it means is that Nintendo will release a Switch where this issue is fixed, one that current Switch owners don't own. In one sense that's great, but in another, I'd rather not have to spend the money. I guess that's where I'm coming from.
I totally messed up with that post. I do apologize. And yes, I will make it a point to apologize to everyone calling that out, because I was an idiot. That'll teach me to be less of an idiot.
I never said that's all what it's about. Helping others to understand the nature of current and future invulnerabilities includes everyone, people like you and your above stated motivation and people who just want to pirate everything.
Nobody would answer your question with no. The only thing I don't like is when people act like most of the people engaging with any of this do it for purposes like yours.
He's already addressed it and apologized (and continues to do so). No need to keep quoting him with the faux-outrage in the hopes of a mod seeing it. At best, report it.
This is pretty much where I'm at on the matter.
An iOS 11.1.2 jailbreak finally released a couple months back, and I've been thinking since then how much I love my phone again now that I have the ability to do whatever I want with it. Jailbreaking allows me to set Google Maps as the default maps app, and reply to iMessages from my Pebble Smartwatch, and connect to wifi networks without going into the Settings app, and have five columns of icons per page on my homescreen. All these little QOL upgrades that just make my phone so much better to me.
You could argue that Jailbreaking enables piracy—but I'm not the one installing pirated apps. And the ability to Jailbreak just improves my experience so much.
Telemetry can be updated, its an always rolling thing. If they so desire, they can hire the necessary engineers to design better and better telemetry. I generally don't agree with your desire to dismiss everything and anything as 'trivial'.
For many, the 3DS' 'trivial' telemetry, which it was, was capable of banning wide swathes of idiots.
That wasn't faux outrage, it was legitimately hilarious. I would've reported it if I wanted to report it.
You're right on all of this.
Still, your doctor comparison is flawed. I'm out.
Yes, thats the same for me. When Apple gave me the features that I was having to get through Jailbreaking, I stopped.
I like this case study
What onus is there on people who have bought a device to support a commercial ecosystem? To protect sales?
It seems to me that if a company wants a product that they have sold to feed into an ecosystem that they profit from in the future, the onus is on them to ensure that it does.
I have no ethical qualms with someone buying a razor and then making their own replacement blades for it, or with someone replacing buttons on a shirt with their own third party proprietary buttons.
Every time this issue comes up it blows my mind how obtuse and entitled gamers are. Aren't you guys video game enthusiasts? Why are you jumping to defend practices which are bad for the industry and have no benefit for you? Hopefully no one thinks they are entitled to a developers work for free?
And I think the whole "it's about the homebrew scene" argument is a joke. Has there ever been a piece of homebrew created for a modded console that genuinely improved it in a crucial way that was not possible before? I've never heard of anything like that. Seems like there is always a rush to get Linux on a device then the scene quickly pivots to playing backups. 99.9% of people who soft mod their console do it for piracy, so can we please stop acting like this is all just unfortunate collateral damage of "the homebrew scene"?
Really I just do not understand why so many people passionate about video games are totally supportive of people who open up the way for cheaters and pirates. Another common justification is "emulators". I always find it suspect how many people are seemingly super excited about being able to soft mod their device into the ultimate retro game machine when the phone in your pocket can do the same thing. Everyone on this board probably has 3 devices within arm reach that can already do the things you want your Switch to do.
I find a lot of the justifications in this thread very wishy washy. People love to wax poetic about consumer rights, but when it comes to the right of content creators to receive a fair profit for their work and intellectual property suddenly people aren't so interested about making sure those people are not preyed upon.
It makes the industry we all care about worse. This is not a great tradeoff for the ability to install a GBA emulator on your console. Of course you are free to do what you want with your hardware, but the rest of us are free to criticize, blame, and advocate for you to stop. And please, save your stories about how piracy is actually a positive and just admit you like free stuff.
And I think the whole "it's about the homebrew scene" argument is a joke. Has there ever been a piece of homebrew created for a modded console that genuinely improved it in a crucial way that was not possible before? I've never heard of anything like that. Seems like there is always a rush to get Linux on a device then the scene quickly pivots to playing backups. 99.9% of people who soft mod their console do it for piracy, so can we please stop acting like this is all just unfortunate collateral damage of "the homebrew scene"?
Really I just do not understand why so many people passionate about video games are totally supportive of people who open up the way for cheaters and pirates. Another common justification is "emulators". I always find it suspect how many people are seemingly super excited about being able to soft mod their device into the ultimate retro game machine when the phone in your pocket can do the same thing. Everyone on this board probably has 3 devices within arm reach that can already do the things you want your Switch to do.
I find a lot of the justifications in this thread very wishy washy. People love to wax poetic about consumer rights, but when it comes to the right of content creators to receive a fair profit for their work and intellectual property suddenly people aren't so interested about making sure those people are not preyed upon.
It makes the industry we all care about worse. This is not a great tradeoff for the ability to install a GBA emulator on your console. Of course you are free to do what you want with your hardware, but the rest of us are free to criticize, blame, and advocate for you to stop. And please, save your stories about how piracy is actually a positive and just admit you like free stuff.
Yeah, go ahead and laugh, I really messed that one up, it's worth the ridicule.
The DS had a lot of great homebrew apps to watch videos in a time when iPad and Smartphones were still far off.
Also people didnt want to take 20 cartridges with them, so they bought the game and then played copies of them.
My Smartphone doesnt have buttons unlike the Switch.
OP I'd prefer it if you distinguished between online and offline cheats.
ONLINE: abhorrent behaviour that ruins other people's fun
OFFLINE: me playing the game I paid for the way I damn well please
There's a very cavernous difference between the two. As such I enjoy homebrew cheat systems.
ONLINE: abhorrent behaviour that ruins other people's fun
OFFLINE: me playing the game I paid for the way I damn well please
There's a very cavernous difference between the two. As such I enjoy homebrew cheat systems.
Console modifications are the only way to provide some form of end of life support for systems, while there is some reason to lament them occurring early in the lifespan of a console in the long run they are always a good thing.
I've literally just bought a large hard drive for my 360 with the intention of retiring it from Xbox Live and installing custom firmware. Why? Because when those Live servers for 360 eventually turn off, the volatile "title update" storage of the 360 means save games and DLC will be lost to time as the game can no longer boot without the update. Not to mention the countless systems I've modified in the past to remove the ridiculous region locks or play fan translations. While I personally see no need for modify my Switch at present, there will inevitably be a time when support for the system is gone where I'm grateful to those people who opened the door - even if only to back up my save games.
I've literally just bought a large hard drive for my 360 with the intention of retiring it from Xbox Live and installing custom firmware. Why? Because when those Live servers for 360 eventually turn off, the volatile "title update" storage of the 360 means save games and DLC will be lost to time as the game can no longer boot without the update. Not to mention the countless systems I've modified in the past to remove the ridiculous region locks or play fan translations. While I personally see no need for modify my Switch at present, there will inevitably be a time when support for the system is gone where I'm grateful to those people who opened the door - even if only to back up my save games.
What's that saying. "Your right to swing your first ends at my face."?
If you're offline and don't affect anyone but yourself, then do whatever you want. I have no beef there. But it's when it affects others I get annoyed.
Telemetry is the absolute worst way to do what you achieve what you describe. It would be trivial to defeat.
A microscopic number of users were banned. Good telemetry did not play a role - that was a myth spread by pirates. The bans were due to a pattern of pre-release play; always occurring after the game leaks, never before. And ultimately the bans were meaningless due to other security failures.
A good system would affirmatively identity a system as tampered and disallow online access due to that. Instead Nintendo does stuff like banning for playing Sun/Moon online early, even if you had a cartridge and no CFW installed.
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Hans improving the framerate in many 3DS games on n3DS.
Translation patches.
Countless excellent romhacks.
Improved load times on many disc based consoles when switching to playing games on flash storage/HDD.
Region free on many consoles.
Ports of DOOM, Quake, ScummVM, and many other games.
Adding (basically native) Gamecube support to the Switch.
Adding media support on things like oXbox and Wii.
Supporting installing PSP games on the Vita and PS TV that would otherwise not be supported.
Just off the top of my head.
Good telemetry lets you track behavior, it never hurts to have good user data even if it only sometimes catches bad actors. It often lets you catch dumb-ass actors.
And as noted, all access to their servers is now console-ID unique, if they have a suitable web to catch you with a small chance every time you connect, eventually your ID will be blacklisted permanently. They *did* learn something from the Xbox and their own cock-ups on the 3DS/WiiU. Now, obviously, the best way to not have this issue is to not have a compromised bootloader or... the ability to run completely unsigned code just by having .nsp with no header checks... (I don't know how that survived to 5.0)...
But this is why they joined HOne. Obviously they knew they were incompetent enough to need help and, well, help they've gotten. Help, even, from some of the big names in their own older scenes. /shrug
The most recent ban wave wasn't on pre-release software. That was a few months ago, had nothing to do with releases, nothing had released.
To be honest, this seems like a selfish way of thinking. Why do you think it's acceptable collateral damage that the Switch be opened up to cheaters and pirates just so you can play some games that the device is not intended to be used to play? There are a plethora of devices which can run ScummVM, several probably in your home, why not use one of those instead of trying to alter the Switch to be exactly what you want it to be? At the cost of harming the entire switch ecosystem? That seems like a pretty bad deal for the rest of us who are using our Switches as intended but now have to deal with cheaters. Maybe you don't feel responsible for other Switch owners or their experiences with the ecosystem, but many of us who are anti mod do.
Assuming T214 Mariko is a real thing, I doubt piracy is going to kill the Switch. I'd say the majority of people who bought a Switch at full price during its first year are not interested in stealing from devs. The fact that (presumably) Nintendo and Nvidia were able to act before Smash, Pokemon, or a price drop is a really good thing.
Its real. We even know what it is at this point.
Hell, NVidia knew about this bootloader issue last year apparently because that's when this thing showed up. So the disclosure was, probably, not even necessary in terms of impact on timetables of this releasing.
Nintendo clearly cut corners to save money when it comes to making their hardware secure. This is all on them.
I remember being shocked when I started taking my son to karate lessons and listening to groups of middle class parents swapping torrent sites and discussing the best places to download DS games. When you make it so easy even people like that are pirating games you're fucking incompetent.
I remember being shocked when I started taking my son to karate lessons and listening to groups of middle class parents swapping torrent sites and discussing the best places to download DS games. When you make it so easy even people like that are pirating games you're fucking incompetent.
Again: you are wrong. There are mechanisms of validating a consoles integrity. Using what's people refer to as telemetry for that is idiotic - even ignoring how easy it is to spoof that data, telemetry data is intended for taking actions after an event. It is not for affirmative confirmation of a systems state while the system is attempting access/during access of online services.
The purpose of that is to prevent pulling content from their CDNs without owning it. All the systems I've looked at are structure so they can protect content downloads. Without proper console integrity checks, they are meaningless for other forms of piracy.
Without affirmative tamper state identification, you are constrained to tightly controlled, quadruple checked after the fact bans. It's very difficult to do those at a scale and frequency that they matter; just ask Microsoft.
The most recent banwave was about pre-release play. It done well after the fact, but that was the commonality. I am not speculating - I know the cause for a fact. Nintendo does not have systems in place on the 3DS to validate the systems integrity and does not collect sufficient data to do that validation on the backend. Virtually all data collection is user controllable, can be toggled off.
A smarter company would use telemetry data to identify users who run warez downloader/CFW updater apps and ban them in delayed, rolling waves, but that is not what's Nintendo did.
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I thought the first mention of Mariko was in Switch's 5.0 update. What evidence of its existence was there last year? Not that I don't believe you, I'm just curious.
There is no doubt that these Hacks will lead to piracy. Really ridiculous that popular videogame sites and forums allow the promotion even with tutorials for the gateway for these Hacks in the first place, basically legitimizing and helping in popularizing these things.
Cheating and gaining the ability to modify my games' behaviour and content is what brings me fun.
I am not a sheep, i like to tinker, reverse engineer and twist everything i got.
That said, i am not a dork, i only cheat single player or, back in the day, in coop with all my friends having the same cheats we created collectively. I don't have a premium network account on the consoles, since i have zero interest in any form of online multiplayer.
I don't make it a dark secret, it's not because i can 1cc some cave shmups that i won't give myself a fun ride and god-mode through others, just for the sheer fun of mass destruction without worries.
Multiplayer games creators can checksum everything they want, i will never complain that network handling of games is rigorous and ruthless to cheaters (after all its some people's way to earn money), but single players and offline multi-players should always have the ability to do as they please with the code they bought their licence for.
I have been doing it for more than 30 years, and i enjoy myself that way.
I am not a sheep, i like to tinker, reverse engineer and twist everything i got.
That said, i am not a dork, i only cheat single player or, back in the day, in coop with all my friends having the same cheats we created collectively. I don't have a premium network account on the consoles, since i have zero interest in any form of online multiplayer.
I don't make it a dark secret, it's not because i can 1cc some cave shmups that i won't give myself a fun ride and god-mode through others, just for the sheer fun of mass destruction without worries.
Multiplayer games creators can checksum everything they want, i will never complain that network handling of games is rigorous and ruthless to cheaters (after all its some people's way to earn money), but single players and offline multi-players should always have the ability to do as they please with the code they bought their licence for.
I have been doing it for more than 30 years, and i enjoy myself that way.
But I'll quote you anyway because I said I'd do so. Yeah, I was stupid saying that.
Introducing the ability to play backups from another console that the device was not originally intended to is not a new feature, it's piracy.
So it looks like the homebrew community has given us some translation patches, some small performance increases, and the ability to run software that can already run on every device in your home. All for the low low price of mass piracy and cheaters ruining every online game.
What about the rest of us who want to use the device the way it was intended?
I would love to meet these DOOM and ScummVM enthusiasts who apparently think it is so important that every single device they ever purchase be able to run their favorite software to the point where it's worth harming the device's ecosystem over.
It showed up with the same name in their documentation in 2017 because of choice labels left in by engineers. So, effectively, NVidia was outing their own bootloader issue by labeling things with b01 revision numbers. Though it didn't really change anything in terms of results.
To that end I agree, pre-emptive checks on system integrity is indeed paramount to better identification of user-end tampering.
I'll cede, I wasn't aware the cause was tracked down as last I spoke on this with a dev a month ago was left at 'not known'.
Which items on my list referred to piracy?
You asked a question, I gave an answer.
Translation patches are a huge deal for people who don't speak English or Japanese.
Small improvements in performance are also a big deal. See how excited everyone gets about BC on Xbox One.
When I was using XBMC on my oXbox, and a video player on my Wii, there were not countless devices that supported those formats. Hell, I'd even argue that innovation of adding these kinds of features to devices by homebrew does a lot to inspire and motivate the designers to add functionality (see great media support on newer consoles, or jailbreak features being added to iOS).
How do any of the things I mentioned stop you from enjoying your devices however you see fit?
Do you really not believe that Doom has enthusiastic fans?
Systems should be used in addition to affirmative identification, but those systems would have to be substantially different and morgen complicated than the baby-level telemetry stuff Nintendo has. I can talk about this subject alld day - design, implementation, tactics - and I know, with every fibre of my being, that Nintendo doesn't have what it takes to effectively fight pirates and cheaters from playing online.
It hasn't been identified in the public, but it has been identified.
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