Hacking Awesome WiiU hacking theories!

[chyyran]

The much anticipated WiiU release will only be a few hours, and along with that, the flood of theories, flaming, rage, and thread spam.

Lets at least try to avoid that this time around. Hopefully collectivize everything from the beginning. I'll just finish with something copy-pasted from the 3DS thread.

Notice that this is not an EoF thread, so we don't want ridiculous ideas (like the Celtic chanting comment) put forth.
If you see theory threads that remain open, please report them.
With your help, maybe we can quench the flames of this subforum
and actually fill it with content rather than speculation.

Thank you.

Lets not have flames to quench in the first place this time.

EDIT: The Unicode strikethrough thing turned out less than satisfactory, if that can be removed, that would be great.

EDIT 2: Smash Stack has been confirmed working on vWii.

You CAN: Run certain Wii-mode homebrews on your WiiU
You CANNOT: Run backup loaders on your WiiU
You CANNOT: Install WADs on your WiiU
You CANNOT: Install HBC on your WiiU
You CANNOT: Install cIOS on your WiiU

Basically, most if not all homebrew that require NAND access will not work.

 

[techboy]

The Wii side of the console might be hackable the same way a normal Wii is.

Odds are good they fixed the letterbomb bug and blocked save exploits, but SmashStack might work since it doesn't need to be copied to the console (they could've fixed the hole though...it is fixable). Then of course, there could be unreleased exploits people are sitting on...

The Wii U side of things will be a challenge if only because someone will need to get the common key out of it first (assuming it uses one).

 

[Clarky]

i recomend we start with one of these

 

[DeadlyFoez]

If I use a flux capacitor on the wii u, it will be hacked so I can play PS5 games on it with my penis.

 

[Clarky]

If I use a flux capacitor on the wii u, it will be hacked so I can play PS5 games on it with my penis.

jump to the left and a step to the right isn't it?

 

[Arras]

Yeah, it may be possible to hack the Wii mode without that much trouble (although getting homebrew to work might be a bit more difficult), but the chance that will lead to any progress for WiiU mode is pretty much zero considering how separate they are. It's like the same thing as DS mode on 3DS being hacked extremely easily, but hardly any progress being made on 3DS mode.

 

[Fear Zoa]

Apparently the wii U has a entire channel that sort of emulates the Wiis system menu. If that's I'd imagine we could probably hack that, but much like ds mode of the 3ds its not going to lead to anything bigger. It would just be nice to have that stuff on the Wii u so I can truly put the wii in retirement.

Also the system transfer tool apparently wipes your wii upon completion, I don't suppose someone with a wii, wiiU and bootmii and boot 2 can make a nand backup, run the transfer tool, then see if they can put the old nand back on.

like the Celtic chanting comment

Damnit I was gonna suggest some good old ritual style Celtic chanting. It never fails me.

 

[Fear Zoa]

Apparently I posted twice, sorry about that.

 

[SifJar]

Everyone seems convinced the Wii mode will be susceptible to (some of) the same exploits as the Wii. I wouldn't be too sure about that. Look at the Vita for example; the PSP was blown wide open almost since it's inception, and particularly so in recent years, but the PSP mode on the Vita remained secure for a little while at least, and then at first was only exploited for user mode homebrew via vHBL.

I'd say the only chance of attacking the Wii mode on the WiiU will be a completely new exploit (I'd say SmashStack will be blocked by some clever on-the-fly patching; this couldn't be done on the Wii due to a lack of resources to run stuff in the background. On the WiiU, there will be ample resources to spare for such a task). All public IOS exploits will doubtlessly be fixed as well (I wonder if anyone has investigated IOS62 properly to see if it fixed recent exploits?). There's always a chance someone has a new exploit and a new IOS exploit, but I wouldn't hold my breath.

Even so, there's little point in hacking the Wii mode, which will doubtlessly be heavily sandboxed and prevented from accessing anything remotely interesting. With a handheld like the 3DS or the Vita, it's different because it means not having to carry two consoles at once, or else choose between two consoles. On a home console, you're not going to carry them around too much anyway, so you can just leave the Wii there for all your Wii homebrew needs. It's only minorly more convenient to be able to do that stuff on the WiiU in Wii mode.

 

[McHaggis]

I wouldn't be surprised if TT had a spare exploit knocking around in the cupboard collecting dust. (edit: for Wii mode, of course)

 

[loco365]

The Wii side of the console might be hackable the same way a normal Wii is.

Odds are good they fixed the letterbomb bug and blocked save exploits, but SmashStack might work since it doesn't need to be copied to the console (they could've fixed the hole though...it is fixable). Then of course, there could be unreleased exploits people are sitting on...

I was thinking the same thing myself. I do know, however, that the WiiU uses some kind of special formatting for any connected USB drives. Perhaps that would be a place to start? Being able to store unlicensed code on a USB drive?

 

[snikerz]

I wouldn't be surprised if TT had a spare exploit knocking around in the cupboard collecting dust. (edit: for Wii mode, of course)

If they don't, other people certainly do.

 

[crediar]

Letterbomb is fixed.

 

[Supercool330]

Anybody try stack smash yet? Also, even if we find an exploit that works, I'm guessing we will need a new version of the HackMii installer just like we have for the last two or three Wii updates. The most interesting thing at this point we be to see if they somehow segregated the NAND, or if the Wii mode could dump the whole thing.

 

[mysticwaterfall]

Would be very interested in if smash stack worked. I'd try it myself but I have to wait until next weekend to play my Wii U...

 

[Deltaechoe]

Well nintendo has almost certainly learned from their previous "mistakes" and it could be awhile (think similar to 3DS) before it's hacked. That is of course, unless someone with golden code and golden luck just HAPPENS to stumble onto something early. Chances of this are, however, very slim


(Also, I'm looking for my copy of brawl just to try it for shits and giggles but it almost certainly won't work seeing as Wii mode is probably sandboxed)

 

[techboy]

Anybody try stack smash yet? Also, even if we find an exploit that works, I'm guessing we will need a new version of the HackMii installer just like we have for the last two or three Wii updates. The most interesting thing at this point we be to see if they somehow segregated the NAND, or if the Wii mode could dump the whole thing.

I suspect the sandboxing hides the Wii U stuff...it would only make sense for N to do that seeing they know the Wii is hacked. They could use a shared NAND, but it would likely just make hacking the Wii U easier (think, if we can get a cIOS running with all privileges, and we can even see the Wii U stuff

What I'm interested in seeing is what system channels, menu, and IOS versions are on the Wii half of a Wii U, and whether they can be dumped and run on a Wii (although I suspect that the IOSes won't work because of hardware differences). All are obviously newer than Wii 4.3.

Then there's the question of whether the hack fixes made for the Wii U's Wii half will be ported to Wii...they already spent the time to fix the bugs, so I can't see it being difficult.

(I'd say SmashStack will be blocked by some clever on-the-fly patching; this couldn't be done on the Wii due to a lack of resources to run stuff in the background.)

One hypothetical idea: Include fixed DOL for Brawl in an update, save to NAND. Update IOS36 (or include a new one and menu loads it instead of 36 when it sees Brawl) so any attempts to read the old DOL from disc silently redirect to the fixed one.

I can't see redirection being heavy on resources. Depending on how IOS works (odds are what I'm about to say isn't feasible, but I don't do Wii programming so I don't know), it could be as simple as an IF statement in the DVD read code that checks title id and requested data (whether by physical address, file name, or otherwise) and returns the fixed DOL data instead of the data on the DVD when appropriate.

 

[GeorgeFoulds]

My theory is just fuck with the code till you find some kind of programming error or exploit. It works with everything.

 

[Deltaechoe]

My theory is just fuck with the code till you find some kind of programming error or exploit. It works with everything.

Well then do it, by all means screw with something when you don't even know where to begin to look

 

[crediar]

smash stack works fine.