@LuckyLand @progx The main problem is that any function that Nintendo patches is loaded by code that the attackers can manipulate. That gives them quite some power to hide their attack well, or to avoid such a function from being executed, if they would make an effort to do so. I do agree that it is not super likely many people will want to use this, especially if no user friendly way to do it is developed (and typically hackers do not care about user friendly stuff very much...). Also, times have changed quite a bit since the days of the Wii and DS with so many high quality, very affordable games in download stores. @Hrimfaksi Their Twitter is super limited, it basically only mentions the bootrom and that it is a hardware issue, so I don't know what they did precisely. Loading Linux on devices is typically the main goal of these kinds of hackers, they don't really care about pirating games, but like to feel smart by figuring out how a system precisely works and then discovering flaws in it. When the Wii U was hacked, the people who did it explained that they did not really cared about making the exploit user friendly by building a 'homebrew channel', because by that time they felt everybody already had 20 devices in their house on which you can run Linux (which was different at the time of the Wii, when smartphones were not really popular, TV's were still 'dumb' and Raspberry Pi's did not exist).
@Radbot42 @LuckyLand The tweet mentions they exploit a mistake in the bootrom, which is the piece of memory the Switch first executes after you push the power up button when the system is turned off. ROM means read-only-memory, and to have a secured, unhackable system you pretty much need that the bootrom can not be changed (otherwise hackers can replace the code that starts the system with whatever they desire). As a consequence, the bootrom memory can only be changed by taking out the particular chip in a Switch device and replacing it with one without the bug, which is probably a tad expensive to do for all the Switches that are already out there. Of course, they will likely fix the chips of newly sold models. By the way, a Coding 101 class that states that anything is possible ignores the Halting Problem and a related class of computational problems that can not be solved in general . @nmanifold They attack the bootrom, which is already executed before the firmware (it is probably the part that loads and executes the firmware), so this must be a different type of attack than the one you are referring to. With a bootrom attack it seems likely they can just load any firmware code they want from the SD card.
Comments 2
Re: Hackers Get Linux Running On Switch And Claim Nintendo Can't Patch The Exploit
@LuckyLand @progx The main problem is that any function that Nintendo patches is loaded by code that the attackers can manipulate. That gives them quite some power to hide their attack well, or to avoid such a function from being executed, if they would make an effort to do so. I do agree that it is not super likely many people will want to use this, especially if no user friendly way to do it is developed (and typically hackers do not care about user friendly stuff very much...). Also, times have changed quite a bit since the days of the Wii and DS with so many high quality, very affordable games in download stores.
@Hrimfaksi Their Twitter is super limited, it basically only mentions the bootrom and that it is a hardware issue, so I don't know what they did precisely. Loading Linux on devices is typically the main goal of these kinds of hackers, they don't really care about pirating games, but like to feel smart by figuring out how a system precisely works and then discovering flaws in it. When the Wii U was hacked, the people who did it explained that they did not really cared about making the exploit user friendly by building a 'homebrew channel', because by that time they felt everybody already had 20 devices in their house on which you can run Linux (which was different at the time of the Wii, when smartphones were not really popular, TV's were still 'dumb' and Raspberry Pi's did not exist).
Re: Hackers Get Linux Running On Switch And Claim Nintendo Can't Patch The Exploit
@Radbot42 @LuckyLand The tweet mentions they exploit a mistake in the bootrom, which is the piece of memory the Switch first executes after you push the power up button when the system is turned off. ROM means read-only-memory, and to have a secured, unhackable system you pretty much need that the bootrom can not be changed (otherwise hackers can replace the code that starts the system with whatever they desire). As a consequence, the bootrom memory can only be changed by taking out the particular chip in a Switch device and replacing it with one without the bug, which is probably a tad expensive to do for all the Switches that are already out there. Of course, they will likely fix the chips of newly sold models.
By the way, a Coding 101 class that states that anything is possible ignores the Halting Problem and a related class of computational problems that can not be solved in general .
@nmanifold They attack the bootrom, which is already executed before the firmware (it is probably the part that loads and executes the firmware), so this must be a different type of attack than the one you are referring to. With a bootrom attack it seems likely they can just load any firmware code they want from the SD card.