Hacking Help me understand the scene?

[Azevedoxx]

Hey guys.

Background:
So, some years ago, i was a very regular lurker and up to date with the cfw new etc. But since rxtools 2.6, i stopped playing and following the 3ds scene because of work and school. Now, i wanna know what's been going on since then now that i'm back to play it a little because of pokemon S&M.

Request:
If some of you got the time and patience, a brief history on what the scene achieved since then and which cfw the average user is using would be really appreciated.

Thanks

 

[proflayton123]

RxTools died off, became inferior to the know known Luma3DS previously called AuReiNAND, A9LH is the master race of hax, GW has an inferior cheat menu to NTR (jk) wha else do you wan to know?

 

[proflayton123]

MenuHax is now a lot inferior with having the MenuHax + EmuNAND set up, with A9LH you can use SysNAND without needing a EmuNAND on the sd partition. Saves space, quicker boot time, 100% boot rate, 99.9% able to unbrick yourself (from soft brick, not BSOD)


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[Pokem]

Here's the scene's entire history

A Pretty Brief History of the 3ds Hacking/Homebrew Scene

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3/2011
the 3ds launches in the west and the famous 3dbrew.org wiki site launches in tandem, which would be the main info hub for 3ds RE for the length of the 3ds's lifespan. Most DS mode flashcarts were quickly fixed to run in DS mode on the 3ds. These carts would periodically be patched until firm 7.0, after which, Nintendo gave up worrying about them.

6/2011
First 3ds roms dumped

9/2011
crown3ds teases a promising video of a flashcard that would have been the first warez enabling solution for 3ds. What we actually got was an Engrish website forever promising: "We are in progressing ... 72%". A meme was born, and a dream died.

2012ish
It is believed Neimod's hardware RAM dumping and subsequent internal research (#3dsdev/3dbrew.org, yellows8 and friends) lead to the first userland (OOT) and a9 exploits. Teasers like IRC chat logs and the following popped up.
https://gbatemp.net/threads/3ds-hack-we-hacked-it.339271/

11/2012
3ds SOC decapping fundraiser started by 3dsdev insider gshock/jl12 to find out the system's secrets and supposedly get it hacked faster. GBAtemp community raises $2300 before gshock disappears with the money, presumably to a resort in fiji with Gateway execs.

8/2013
Gateway released. The 3ds is offically hacked and piracy begins. They continue to be basically the entire "homebrew" scene for the next year and a half. There was, however, some basic arm9 homebrew possible via mset exploit + p3ds (rsaVerifySHA256 a9 sploit), but it was limited to just bare-metal stuff like ram dumpers, tetris, pong and the like. It was less impressive than even DS homebrew (and publicly, nobody knew how to properly harness the a9's power like nowadays).

1/2014
brickgate/brickway - infamous scandal where Gateway releases a firm that intentionally bricks user 3ds's that run their software on GW clones like R4 gold Deluxe and Orange3DS. Even some legit users get caught up in Gateway's spiderweb of bricks. Gateway did offer to fix those units.

3/2014
citra - first commit. the gold standard of 3ds emulators for the PC is born. Wouldn't really hit its stride until 2016, a testament to how complex a system the 3ds is.

11/2014
Then the giovani/palantine cfw (internally made by yellows8 and others) leak happened, bringing the first free, closed source cfw to the masses. Limitations: 4.5, emunand not updatable, low boot rate, a bitch to install, etc. But it did run cias, and it forced Gateway to add cia support to its flashcard in a panic about a week later.

11/2014
sky3ds flashcart released. plays clean cart roms on any firmware, but no homebrew, cia's, mods, etc. Initial model limited to just 10 non-replaceable games with the manufacturer suggesting 'buy another' if you want more. Pirates consider this theft and scoff. Sky3ds eases its restriction and releases a 'blue button' card without the game limit.

11/2014
ninjhax userland (1st sane hb environment) and ctrulib make their triumphant, morally centered debut shortly after palantine.
ntr cfw released - plug-in based a11 kernal cfw that adds many cool features like RAM poking and 3ds -> PC video streaming (2016).

1/2015
Gateway cracks 9.2 and updates its flashcard to the OMEGA series. Genius yifanlu posts detailed blog REing the GW memchunkhax/firmlaunchhax combo and teams like SALT, roxas75, and patois quickly implement it.

2/2015
rxtools released. 1st legit emunand/multi-tool implementation. anti piracy.

5/2015
pasta cfw released after sig patches leaked on pastebin (hence the name). Combined with patois open source mchunkhax/firmlaunchhax (brahma) this resulted in the 1st open source cfw. no emunand.

5/2015
rxtools patched with above sig patches by ahp_person (appletinivi). roxas does not approve, throws fit.

6/2015
roxas gives in, released rxtools source, adds sig patches officially. quits scene.
Rxtools goes on to be the "it" cfw for the next several months, despite being kinda sloppily coded and a risk to inexperienced users with its dangerous arm9 power-user features built-in.

7/2015
ninjhax2x released. App takeover, rom hacks, and other nice things too numerous to detail.

8/2015
tubehax - primary userland exploit that takes advantage of the 3ds's otherwise useless youtube app. An excellent primary entrypoint. Unfortunately patched a couple months later.
ironhax - first secondary userland exploit - one that requires a primary (like tubehax) to install.
reinand - first full featured New3ds cfw.

9/2015
menuhax - secondary home menu exploit that allows boot time userland execution. Fantastic when paired with cfw launchers save for the annoyingly unreliable *hax bootrates on 9.2. a favorite among homebrew peasants, and the sworn enemy of the late Margen67
browserhax - primary browser exploits for old/new 3ds that would be updated on and off over the coming months.

12/2015
sky3ds+ released. bypasses cart-based AP in recent games and adds filesystem-based game loading among other features.

12/2015
32c3 hacker conference - snshax, arm9loaderhax, memchunkhax2, ntrcardhax revealed. Userland exploits menuhax, and ironfall were updated too.

1/2016
10.x downgrading to 9.2 released. steveice10 implements. biggest PM group in the history of GBAtemp forged in secret ;p Downgrading patched with 10.4.

2/2016
arm9loaderhax emerges, lumbering and crushing everything in its path. menuhax peasants begin their suffering.
aureinand/luma3ds - fork of reinand that took the cfw's features to a new level. The authors, aurora wright and tuxsh, had a public falling out with the original author, reisukaku, and subsequently cut all ties with him by first renaming the project from aureinand to luma3ds, then removing the fork status altogether. It is currently the most popular cfw today (9/2016).

3/2016
aliaspider releases memchunkhax2.1, allowing downgrades to 9.2 to resume. calls it svchax for reasons only known to him. This new k11 sploit would last through 10.7.

7/2016
stupid lolcat finally reveals the dsiware firm downgrade method after hinting about it for months. This allows the 9.2 downgrading to resume yet again (given a second fully hacked system). Nintendo privately thinks it's pretty cool, ignores it. Fieldrunners sales skyrocket.

9/2016
arm9loaderhax becomes even more irresistible due to ctrnand transfer (shortens install time on both new/old 3ds) and otpless (instant new3ds install).

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I probably missed some things, but that's a pretty good start. Let me know if there are any important omissions.

 

[Azevedoxx]

thanks guys, so i should be looking to move to luma3ds then

 

[LuigiXHero]

Also AL9H also if you want instant boot rate, making it easy to recover a brick and no need for emunand. I actually don't know if I can link the guide so just google "3ds al9h guide" it'll probably be the first link.

 

[TheNerdWIzard]

Don't forget about being able to play DS homebrew and DS download play demos without a flashcart.

 

[shadowfocus603]

https://plailect.github.io/Guide/
That's the guide for moving to A9LH/Luma without losing anything from your current setup as far as installed games etc

 

[Sumea]

RXTools is dead more or less because Cakes and ReiNAND were better, and they traded a lot of stuff between whatever they made together, into two different CFW's.
Then AuroraWright took ReiNand and forked it into her own project - until it was just so beyond original ReiNand it is it's own CFW respectively so, and I think Rei is not working so hard on ReiNand anymore anyway, be it because AuroraWright's originally AuReiNand, Now "Luma3DS" efforts.

So tons of CFW improvements happend, with N3DS support too, we got some KEEEYSSS, N3DS support became REALLY good, better GBA support, better support for games like Smash and Monster Hunter 4 which are weird for Original 3DS as they reboot into extended memory layout mode disabling browser and Miiverse etc.

Then came Arm9LoaderHax - this is to put it simply, installing a purposefully corrupted and payloaded FIRM into your system so you end up loading your own code - with Arm9 privileges, right on the boot - and 100% of the time. A9LH not being a CFW, but being a loader for a CFW killed off menuhax setups, and even EmuNAND, since you can do all the CFW goodness on your SysNAND now. You are booting to CFW first and foremost after all, if you install A9LH.

Plailect guide is best one to follow. The hard part is to figure out what things you do not need, and what not. This is actually the aspect dislike most about the guide; It is written for the perspective of doing it all for the first time, and it has someone's personal best picks for everything. Meanwhile I been doing old things for friends and so on, and to myself. The guide is still best place for up-to-date info but it is somewhat of challenge to get what I need and what I can just discard. I do not need to inject FBI or anything for one example, on a setup where emunand already has had it all and still will keep it after I transition the emunand into sysnand. Which is another thing I just need to know how to do since the guide is not written with that in mind anymore.

That said, it still is the best source, just have to figure out the parts that you want to do and parts you already have solutions done for, and then the few other things you may need a separate guide for, or to ask someone straight about, maybe even in this thread.

But yeah:
First different CFW's made different kinds of advancements all around.
Then Arm9LoaderHax was released, making it into holy grail of 3DS hacking, we now have permanently installed a loader in boot time for 3DS that will give CFW on boot.
Also some revelations on... Naughty stuff came about as people realized we can make a database for tickets and... Basically download eShop content with them. There now exists a QR generator on a 3DS ticket database site where you can choose a title, any title or DLC, generate QR code and download it through scanning the QR code with FBI. FBI now is MUCH nicer software with expanded functionality than it was back in RXtools days. The QR installations are also great tools for homebrew developers and there overall is less and less need to take out the SD card from your console or accessing SDcard management in 3DS. Luma 3DS has had unofficial updater apps you can install right on your home screen so even updating the currently most accepted CFW can be done right within the console, over any Wifi connection, again no need for pulling out the SD and doing it manually with your PC and all that.
There also is a app called FreeShop that more or less is alternative eShop that through the power of said ticket collection, can get you loads of game downloads, updates or straight-from-eshop DLC downloads without screwing your existing... Less than stellar DLC installations in official eShop's eyes.

so ultimate TL;DR:
Shit's insane yo. I came in with the gold rush of downgrades and that ushered a lot of the CFW development forward too. I had to keep up updating all of this a lot and I been a user of all, RXtools(for VERY short while), ReiNand, Cakes (MidKid is still my GBAwaifu do not ever violate him), and now Luma3DS. It is CRAZY to think what we are doing with our 3DS's on halloween 2016, vs. christmas 2015. Heck, the downgrade craze came about in march of this year, not even close a full year ago.