Hacking How might one get into Wii U hacking if they have no hacking experience?

[Noah Hall]

Hello! Just to get a small bit of background info out of the way: I'm known as Mr. Potatobadger around the smaller internet communities I hang around. I've been programming video games for over 10 years now. Currently, I'm working under Simon "Stealth" Thomley of Head Cannon. He's one of the 2 guys who created the Sonic 1 and 2 Remastered editions. You might also have heard of him if you know anything about the Sonic hacking community, he's the guy responsible for Sonic Megamix. Anyways, it's my first professional level job, and I'm excited about it. Enough about that, moving onward.

We're working on an independently developed video game with a team of 9 people. If you're curious about the project, feel free to check this tumblr post out.

The engine were using is HCGE, created by Stealth. You might have heard of it, there is a 3DS homebrew version of it (even though it's a bit on the slow side). It's kind of like 68K ASM, but modernized. Any coding changes are reflected the instant you reload a game, which is nice.The engine is free to use non-commercially, so download it and mess around with it if you're curious. That tumblr post should also give you a good idea of the dev environment.

Well, that's a bit more text than I expected, and this sentence isn't really helping either... Moving on now! Hopefully you understand that I know my shit. At least when it comes to games...

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My knowledge on hacking is very minimal. I really only know a little bit about Sega Genesis hacking, and that's really as far as it goes. However, I really want to get into hacking. Specifically, Wii U hacking, as you can probably guess.

But how. Where the hell do I even start? I'm already in the hole considering my Wii U is 5.4.0, so anything current seems out of the option, unless I buy a second Wii U.

I've looked through a few of the FAQ threads on here, and nothing really tells about where to start.

Are the necessary tools to do things like examine the contents of a Wii U disc public? I have so many questions, but I'm incredibly inspired and intrigued by the progress some people have made, like NWPlayer, (who I've know about for a while,) and dantarionX (, who I just found out about today).

I apologize if I'm asking in the wrong place, or asking the wrong things. All I know is that I'm really inspired by the hard work of you guys, and I want to be a part of this community.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thank you for your time!

 

[Marionumber1]

Depends on what you mean by Wii U hacking. If you mean writing homebrew, you can already start writing it with our libwiiu repo. Of course, it doesn't support 5.4.0 yet, so you'd have to wait until it does or (as you said) get another Wii U. If game modding is your focus (the stuff NWP and dantarion have done), you'll sadly have to wait. The necessary tools, like Cafiine and TCPGecko, are out there, but no kernel exploit has been released yet. Chadderz never intends to release his, and mine will be out soon (probably a few weeks). You need the kernel exploit to do anything to apps outside of the browser. In summary, where you start depends on what you want to do.

 

[Noah Hall]

I'm certainly more interested in game modification, that's for sure.

There's some other things I'd like to look into as well. For example, just examining and viewing the contents of a Wii U disc. Obviously, that's going to be essential to modifying games in the future, so how might one go about that?

Thank you for your response!

 

[razielleonhart]

i have zero hacking experience so i been banging two rocks together while i wait

 

[Jackall4BDN]

For example, just examining and viewing the contents of a Wii U disc. Obviously, that's going to be essential to modifying games in the future, so how might one go about that?

I'm not entirely sure, but i think i heard there is a Program for Windows that provides a set of tools for WiiU-Game-Backups, one of which let's you decrypt and extract the Disc-Contents, but i'm not sure whether and which keys would be needed to be given in to acomplish that. Off course right now there is no way to reassemble the Image, but it wouldn't be of any use as of now, anyways.

But crediar seems to have done another one, now that i googled it.

Also i have seen a few pages on google to obtain said images, but i couldn't tell you even if i where allowed to, as i don't remember the search terms i used xD

Sry if all this was rather semi-helpfull

 

[Marionumber1]

I'm certainly more interested in game modification, that's for sure.

There's some other things I'd like to look into as well. For example, just examining and viewing the contents of a Wii U disc. Obviously, that's going to be essential to modifying games in the future, so how might one go about that?

Thank you for your response!

The best may to get the contents of a Wii U disc is through TCPGecko. It has an option to dump the filesystem of a game. Of course, like I said, you won't be able to use it without a kernel exploit.

 

[Noah Hall]

I understand. Thanks for the response you two!

Looks like I'll have to wait just a bit longer.

 

[CosmoCortney]

If you want to get into RAM hacking and writing PPC assembly code you could have a look here:
WiiBrew assembler tutorial
Simplified PPC instruction set
Generic Code Hacking

I have learnt a lot from there. But for the PPC stuff it is tricky to get into the matter with the given examples (in my opinion).
This is also related to stuff that could be done with TCP Gecko dNET.
Due a lot of requests I'm going to make new tutorials about GCN, Wii and Wii U RAM hacking as soon as the kernel exploit will be out

If you want to get into RAM hacking right now you could practice a bit with dolphin. It has a really limited cheat searcher but it's good enough to learn all the basics

 

[Noah Hall]

Thanks a bunch! I'll be sure to check this stuff out.

 

[TheZander]

most hackers that i know as well as a couple wiiu hackers started on hackthissite.org it's a fun interactive experience that pits you against increasingly challenging hacking puzzles. once you get passed level 5 you have the ability to hack a gamecube in order to hack wiiu level 7 is a must and 8 will really help out. (basically the real trick to hacking anything is just right click+view source and youre in) they dont tell you that as a means to hawk overpriced linux books.

 

[blaze862]

Chadderz never intends to release his, and mine will be out soon (probably a few weeks).

So you've found a kernel exploit? I never thought this day would come . Nice job, even though i can't really say much though since i have no idea how hacking even works but i do know it'll open up many awesome opportunities. Can't wait

 

[BullyWiiPlaza]

Due a lot of requests I'm going to make new tutorials about GCN, Wii and Wii U RAM hacking as soon as the kernel exploit will be out

I will also make a bunch of Wii U tutorials to help everybody else to get going

 

[YugamiSekai]

As I have seen in this video, how would one go and break security? Would that require taking apart the console and seeing things like the CPU/GPU or RAM?

 

[Marionumber1]

As I have seen in this video, how would one go and break security? Would that require taking apart the console and seeing things like the CPU/GPU or RAM?

Depends on which part of the security you want to break. WebKit is probably easier, due to being open-source and having bugs found all the time. We just searched the internet for bugs and adapted them to the Wii U. For the kernel, it can be done through reverse engineering areas of the code that seem like they have the potentially to be buggy, or "fuzzing" syscalls, which is passing invalid data and seeing if it crashes. Exploiting IOSU is similar to that. You wouldn't usually need to look at the hardware.

 

[YugamiSekai]

Depends on which part of the security you want to break. WebKit is probably easier, due to being open-source and having bugs found all the time. We just searched the internet for bugs and adapted them to the Wii U. For the kernel, it can be done through reverse engineering areas of the code that seem like they have the potentially to be buggy, or "fuzzing" syscalls, which is passing invalid data and seeing if it crashes. Exploiting IOSU is similar to that. You wouldn't usually need to look at the hardware.

That's good to know. Maybe the NX is mine to hack. @Marionumber1 But how would one execute the code on the Wii U? Is it like a modified USB device that enables code execution, or is it like hosting the code (as seen in the Bowser Exploit)?