Nintendo Switch Piracy & Hacking - Did You Know Gaming Ft. Dazz

[Music] did you know the switches hacking scene has often been compared to a cat-and-mouse game between hack is attempting to crack the switch and Nintendo's efforts to stamp them out for instance the switches 7.0 point 0 update used a scrambled batch of code in an attempt to slow hackers down this ultimately bought a Nintendo a mere four hours before hacker Elmer Rorick cracked the update Nintendo has not responded to hackers lightly outright banning the switches of identified hackers from accessing online services reports have surfaced that Nintendo even banned unhak switch consoles that merely connected to hacked switch consoles a bug found in these switches NVIDIA Tegra x1 allowed hackers to access the switches boot ROM to install a range of programs on the switch packing group fail overflow explained this bug is in the recovery mode which is a USB based rescue mode intended for initial flashing of Tegra devices and recovery of bricked devices the recovery mode only allows signed images to be loaded but thanks to the bug arbitrary code execution is possible by overflowing the recovery mode with data from another computer hackers were able to circumvent Nintendo's security methods this led to some pretty interesting programs running off the switch for instance some hackers transformed the switch into a handheld Linux machine capable of running the dolphin GameCube and Wii emulator as the bug was on a hardware level in the boot ROM it cannot be patched by Nintendo through software updates however hackers noticed that Nintendo quietly released a hardware revision of the switch around July of 2018 this new model had a new boot rom specifically to thwart the exploit nevertheless the millions of original model 1 Tendo switches released before the hardware revision remained permanently hackable to this day despite Nintendo's known zero-tolerance approach to hacking one hacker spoke up kate Temkin creator of a switch cold boot software launcher fusee jelly / disclosed the details of her exploits to both Nintendo and NVIDIA Temkin wrote I can tell you it wasn't fun to find a bug with such a broad impact it's significantly complicated the ethics involved given the potential for a lot of bad to be done by any parties who independently discover these vulnerabilities I thought it best to disclose this immediately the hacking group fail overflow also revealed the information around its hack and distance themselves from pirates saying the bug will be made public sooner or later so we might as well release now along with our Linux boot chain and kernel tree to make it very clear that we do this for fun and homebrew and nothing else an example of for fun hacking is German Android developer max Keller's experiments installing Android onto the switch there's also fevered a homebrew application that allows users to overclock their switches GPU to potentially achieve better in-game performance indie game developer Amira Jean attempted to join in on the fun by secretly including a Ruby code editor and interpreter in his shop game a darkroom as an easter egg by connecting a USB keyboard and pressing the tilt key while running the game players could effectively turn their switch into a ruby programming machine after the game's release Rajan posted how to access the secret online this surprise was not well received by Nintendo who promptly removed the game from the eShop altogether a darkrooms publisher circle entertainment was left scrambling to deal with the fallout Rajan told Eurogamer I deeply regret how this is blown up a simple toy sandbox environment has been framed as this massive exploit it was a last-second spark of inspiration and I snuck it in assuming that plugging in a USB keyboard and pressing the tilt key wasn't part of the test plan I don't know what to say except I'm sorry and all I wanted to do was allow kids to discover what I discovered 25 years ago to be fair to Nintendo seemingly innocent switch hacks have been abused in the past for example hackers managed to break into the switches deaf menu an application used by developers for creating content for the system a going by racer you Kaku discovered a means of successfully uploading custom profile advertised onto the switch that could be seen by other players unfortunately a select number of individuals used the exploit to upload especially lewd images as their profile pictures reports of gamers running into their balloons in Super Mario odyssey's Luigi's balloon wild mode surfaced soon after race you Kaku lamented I don't condone that behavior and this is why we can't have nice things the story made waves through the gaming press prompting a Nintendo spokesperson to officially comment on the matter the spokesperson said a very small number of consumers have been using modified Nintendo switch systems to display inappropriate or unauthorized material in certain online games Nintendo always strives to provide a positive experience for all consumers and this includes continuously monitoring all threats to its product security and taking swift and strong action to prevent them modified Nintendo switch systems have been banned trolls are far from Nintendo's biggest concern as there's a darker side to the switch hacking scene piracy pirates have managed to leak numerous switch games such as Diablo 3 Dark Souls remastered and Super Mario Party before they even hit store shelves while many games are leaked a few days before their official release this isn't always the case pirates managed to get hold of Super Smash Brothers ultimate almost two entire weeks before the game's launch posting pre-release games online isn't a simple process with middlemen operating between pirates and leakers these middlemen safely hand over dumped games from leakers to the Pirates who make sure the middle man's identity is not revealed there can be others involved as well such as those who reverse-engineer Nintendo's tools and programs to break them open for hacking there's also coders who create and improve pirating software among others some people have managed to download games early directly from Nintendo by using software to gain access to the company's servers upon obtaining the game keys which are typically used by reviewers to unlock digital review copies the games are opened up for anyone to play even then playing a pirated game isn't as simple as downloading a file instead pirates must access the switch's recovery mode download and install a boot menu to launch homebrew software and then use another custom program to actually play the pirated game though hacking on the switch has been a long collective effort not all hackers play nice for example one particularly devious pirate uploaded a version of Dee offer to 4chan Dee author is a piece of piracy software typically used to generate authentication tokens to connect a computer to Nintendo's servers however this version of the program had been maliciously altered to steal each user's switch certificate an important code unique to every switch console that allows the system to connect to Nintendo servers it would then upload the certificates through the Pirates own server Simon the author's original creator suspects the malware was created in a huge pirating scheme he told motherboard whoever did this required lots and lots of certificates as they knew they'll get caught out pinpointed by Nintendo and banned quickly in retaliation Simon created a spamming program built to upload random nonsense onto the pirate server in hopes of overloading it another user went as far as to docks the pirate incidents like these aren't uncommon on the switches pirating scene either a group of pirates under the banner team executors have attempted to profit from switch piracy by selling their own pirating software executors SX OS is a custom firmware that claims to make pirating easy allowing users to play games on the switch by rectly from a microSD card despite being pirating software s X OS comes with some particularly nasty anti-piracy measures the program contains a brick code that will completely lock up the switches emmc internal memory basically rendering the console useless if it detects the user is trying to crack the program s X OS is brick code along with accusations that executors stolen work from other hackers to create their firmware has earned the team a number of enemies among the hacking community Kate Temkin stated I completely detest what I've seen of their practices and methods not just do they publicly endorse piracy and seek to profit from keeping information to a few people but they're also willing to drop a zero-day that affects a broad swath of devices on the public without any responsible disclosure all in all I think that team executors seems to be without morals or scruples and I am happy to do as much as I can to reduce their profitability and thus D incentivize these kinds of awful behavior Nintendo for its part has gone a step further than just wielding its ban hammer they devised the means to ban the pirated games to each switch game card has its own unique certificate built in from the factory just like the consoles themselves Digital a shop games are coded to specific consoles and Nintendo accounts upon purchase by tracing these certificates Nintendo can easily determine whether a game card is an original legitimate copy and if a user's account legally owns the digital games they play for example if someone grabs a pirated switch game that has been dumped online Nintendo can recognize the duplicated certificate and ban not only the pirated copy but the original game card as well as every subsequent pirate copy of the game as soon as it goes online while pirates can attempt to avoid being banned by strictly playing illegally obtained games offline Ars Technica writer kyle Orland hypothesizes the switches system firmware could also theoretically detect pirated games being played offline then bury a flag in the hardware to activate a network ban the next time the player logs online this method has raised some concerns as those who purchase pre-owned switch games could unwittingly buy a legitimate game card that has been permanently banned regardless Nintendo hasn't stopped there and has even started taking pirates to court in December 2018 Nintendo of America filed a lawsuit against California resident Mikkel Lucia du Lac who sold and installed team executors piracy products onto switches as well as other pirated content through offer up Nintendo alleges the Mikell illegally hacked 100 switch consoles and expects a hundred and fifty thousand dollars for each copyright infringer the more nintendo hopes to sue anyone else involved with Mikhail's pirating operation such as those connected to team executors the team stated we believe even in the USA our product should be absolutely Lidl but ultimately it will be on this court to decide we hope it will be with absolute fairness and not under the pressure of another big corporation did you also know that the old man who claims his right you evolved in the original Pokemon games does so because of a translation mishap or that these Spanish versions of the original games have a startling amount of translation errors for more facts check out the digital gaming video on mistakes in Pokemon games [Music]

Channel: DidYouKnowGaming?

Views: 1,511,391

Keywords: nintendo switch, switch, nintendo, switch hacking, switch piracy, hacking, piracy, hack, did you know gaming, didyouknowgaming, dykgaming, dykg, gaming

Id: JLxh4HFlDz0

Length: 12min 16sec (736 seconds)

Published: Sat Jul 13 2019