Hacking [PSA] Strong anti-piracy measures implemented by Nintendo for online.

[Xathya]

big hack of scrisM ( @SciresM ) is stroke:

again!

show display of reversed engines and bruteforce the cratosridges certifications. Maybe even serial highjacks of the rsa keygen titlecert verify..

But proves my theorems of romz do not go online! Sons: please stay in the safe!

 

[DeoNaught]

I like how you have people like "I DON'T CARE ABOUT ONLINE"
but when they get banned they are gonna be like "HELP ME PLAY ONLINE..... PLEASE?"

I'm Glad that they didn't fuck up security on the Switch like they did for the 3ds

 

[Peabutt]

If you think about it, its pure marketing genius. They stop people from sharing game certs and pirating their IP, and at the same time discourage used game sales, further boosting their own. Somebody needs a raise, lol.

Honestly I'm kinda proud of them for stepping up their game. They really needed to for a while now. Nintendo also deserves more credit than they are given sometimes. Yeah they have screwed up with security on past consoles and yeah they haven't had the most powerful system on the market in quite a long time. But 99% of the time the games that they produce themselves are pretty damn good and they also saved the gaming industry back in the 80's. Who really knows where we would be without them.

About the discouraging used game sales, who the hell wants to support a shitty company like gamestop anyways. "Power to the players" yeah sure dude.

 

[andeers]

So we must choose: free games or paid online. Pretty easy decision, playing online games on handheld (does somebody still think it's 'hybrid? lol, watara is a hybrid too then).

Choice is super ez, since you can play better online games on PC without any retarted subscriptions.

Yes, it is an hybrid. And not everyone plays on PC. You're assuming a lot of things.
BUT. I think it's still an easy decision. I agree with you on that point.

 

[MadMageKefka]

Honestly I'm kinda proud of them for stepping up their game. They really needed to for a while now. Nintendo also deserves more credit than they are given sometimes. Yeah they have screwed up with security on past consoles and yeah they haven't had the most powerful system on the market in quite a long time. But 99% of the time the games that they produce themselves are pretty damn good and they also saved the gaming industry back in the 80's. Who really knows where we would be without them.

About the discouraging used game sales, who the hell wants to support a shitty company like gamestop anyways. "Power to the players" yeah sure dude.

It's 100% true that Nintendo has had a lot of security issues in the past, but a lot of people forget how targeted they are. The Nintendo hacking scene is HUGE, thanks to their proprietary IPs. Can't pirate the latest Zelda game on any other console. I feel like they deserve some slack, since people are targeting them harder than anyone else.

..and yea, screw Gamestop, but this hurts ALL used game sales, not just them.

 

[Armadillo]

Meh, play a hacked console online, risk the banhammer.

Still hacking mine, I'll eat a shoe before I pay for p2p online.

 

[Cortexfou]

Do you think it'll be possible to simply buy the online games and download in the underground the offline games to no get banned ?

 

[FAST6191]

Thanks for the read. Let the games begin, wonder when we will see people attempt to subvert the trustzone actions to present a false ID. Better yet I wonder if we could have some fun generating IDs.

Also "These are extremely strong anti-piracy measures"
Pssh. All that was described was baseline competence if you were in 2010 from where I sit. Though I suppose it will take a bit of effort to work around compared to some previous stuff.

Well you would still need to go online if you wanted to get updates for your backups

Unless there is a way to get them without connecting to nintendo servers

Plenty of things were set up for past consoles for people wanting updates, or indeed specific updates if they wanted specific bugs, but having offline consoles (maybe do a search for xbox 360 title updates). If they can't do it trivially via "official" means here I imagine such a setup will be created again. To make things easy most updates tend to be presented as bundled files and I am sure if you have otherwise knocked out the signature verification that you can install them as well.

I have to question this one. What if a pirate gets his hands on a copy of Dark Souls via Gamefly or Gamestop, and returns it after dumping the unique header cert thingy. Then someone else buys the game or rents it via Gamefly, and both go online at the same time? Is Nintendo going to seriously ban both users? One is completely innocent!

I have a better one. What if a few thousand members of a place like this do something like that but spray them all online everywhere.

I like how you have people like "I DON'T CARE ABOUT ONLINE"
but when they get banned they are gonna be like "HELP ME PLAY ONLINE..... PLEASE?"

I'm Glad that they didn't fuck up security on the Switch like they did for the 3ds

Are the two mutually exclusive?
Play online until you get banned, then have a look to see the state of things and hop back on if you can.

 

[Viri]

I have a better one. What if a few thousand members of a place like this do something like that but spray them all online everywhere.

That will probably happen. Someone here is going to buy a game that goes online, dump the keys, return the game, share the keys. Nintendo is going to notice that 200 people are using the same keys, and are playing at the same time, and ban them. Some guy is going to be included in that ban wave, just because he bought the game used at Gamestop. That would be pretty shitty of Nintendo.

 

[smf]

Well wouldn't it be possible to change the console Id(an invalid one) with cfw so that the original ID remains protected against bans? I know the original one is hard-coded but maybe redirect it

If this was the first console to go online then I'd hold out hope, but all the manufacturers now have been banning consoles for a few generations. I think they can figure out how to sign a console id.

You could probably buy another switch and dump it's console id and spoof that, not that this really helps.

 

[Peabutt]

It's 100% true that Nintendo has had a lot of security issues in the past, but a lot of people forget how targeted they are. The Nintendo hacking scene is HUGE, thanks to their proprietary IPs. Can't pirate the latest Zelda game on any other console. I feel like they deserve some slack, since people are targeting them harder than anyone else.

..and yea, screw Gamestop, but this hurts ALL used game sales, not just them.

Agreed.

And yeah I know it hurts all used game sales, which sucks. I just wanted to call out Gamestop hahaha.

 

[SodaSoba]

If you think about it, its pure marketing genius. They stop people from sharing game certs and pirating their IP, and at the same time discourage used game sales, further boosting their own. Somebody needs a raise, lol.


Short version is: don't go online with pirated games. Keep pirated games on an emuNAND that is offline 24-7, and your legit stuff on sysNAND, so you can go online.

I'm waiting for the article about used game sales causing system bans now...

I'm sure that would be a pr nightmare for Nintendo...

 

[puppydg68]

Short version is: don't go online with pirated games. Keep pirated games on an emuNAND that is offline 24-7, and your legit stuff on sysNAND, so you can go online.

I was actually referring to installing the Exfat Driver onto the switch - not pirating games. The current tutorial to install the exfat driver without updating, requires you to use a pirate XCI to install the driver, and was wondering if using this tutorial to update the exfat driver would trigger a ban given the information that was shared. I'm on 4.01 and don't want to update, but want the exfat driver.

 

[Enryx25]

I'm proud of Nintendo. They finally stepped up their security. Their online still sucks though.

 

[lukhart]

I was actually referring to installing the Exfat Driver onto the switch - not pirating games. The current tutorial to install the exfat driver without updating, requires you to use a pirate XCI to install the driver, and was wondering if using this tutorial to update the exfat driver would trigger a ban given the information that was shared. I'm on 4.01 and don't want to update, but want the exfat driver.

You can split the XCI files with a tool so it stays at 4gb maximum and still can be read by SX OS and probably future backup loaders. If piracy is not your cup of tea you can wait for Emunand to safely update the driver

About the topic, the title is very self-explanatory to me. If those measures are for online play, then Emunand could provide online for legit games while the pirated ones stays offline in the other nand

 

[Deathscreton]

I'm not sure I fully grasp the concept. Everything seems to revolve around the fact that each game, digital and cartridge has a special, unique cert that cannot be spoofed, otherwise you risk getting banned. So why can't we force the Switch to send a cert of a purchased game (with online functionality) in order receive the needed token from the Server, then connect anyways? What other security functions are disallowing this?

Is the server constantly requesting the cert from the game being played? Is it tracking the information the game sends, thus it can compare it to the cert it received and know you're not playing the game you were claiming to play?

 

[phreaksho]

Very informative post. Good read!

 

[lukhart]

I'm not sure I fully grasp the concept. Everything seems to revolve around the fact that each game, digital and cartridge has a special, unique cert that cannot be spoofed, otherwise you risk getting banned. So why can't we force the Switch to send a cert of a purchased game (with online functionality) in order receive the needed token from the Server, then connect anyways? What other security functions are disallowing this?

Is the server constantly requesting the cert from the game being played? Is it tracking the information the game sends, thus it can compare it to the cert it received and know you're not playing the game you were claiming to play?

I've some questions similar to this. Wouldn't a full-blown CFW permit access to modify such files, "cheating" the validation process? If the certs are sent from your switch and you have full control of it's functions through Atmosphere, what Nintendo can do about it? It kinda sounds to me that since SciresM and RS, being antipiracy, wouldn't be willing to share this info or develop such capabilities in the CFW, but maybe it's something that can be worked in the future. Not sure if I'm correct.

EDIT: I completely overlooked the unique nature of the certs lol. Maybe that's why this cant happen

 

[Deathscreton]

I've some questions similar to this. Wouldn't a full-blown CFW permit access to modify such files, "cheating" the validation process? If the certs are sent from your switch and you have full control of it's functions through Atmosphere, what Nintendo can do about it? It kinda sounds to me that since SciresM and RS, being antipiracy, wouldn't be willing to share this info or develop such capabilities in the CFW, but maybe it's something that can be worked in the future. Not sure if I'm correct.

No, I think it's more along the lines that they aren't fully certain and don't want to spread false information around, or us end users are just missing something in the concept that prevents this from happening.

I'm fairly certain someone else has asked these questions and are for sure why this wouldn't work. I just wanna be in the know. lmao

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EDIT: I completely overlooked the unique nature of the certs lol. Maybe that's why this cant happen

See, that's waht confuses me. From what I'm reading here, the server doesn't give two shits about WHAT cert it's receiving, so long as the cert it obtains from the Switch is a valid cert for the game it claims to be playing.

For example: If I borrowed Overcooked without owning it, requested to go online and instead, sent the Fortnite cert that is clearly obtained by my Switch from the eShop, how will the server know that I'm actually NOT playing Fortnite? The cert it received is valid, matches everything my Switch claims to be, the only outstanding issue is the traffic the device sends because the traffic is obviously not Fortnite. So unless they're reading all the traffic my Switch sends to the Fortnite servers (which aren't owned by Ninty), they can't detect what I'm playing.

Now I could see this being different with first party games. I imagine what may be happening is that when I send in a request for a token for say the new Smashbros (that I bought digitally, legally), but want to play Super Mario Party instead, it confirms my cert, but instead of sending me to the SMP servers/P2P matchmaking server, it sends me to the Smashbros servers, notices the different in data/traffic being received and bans my console for trying to be slick.

This is all hearsay though. I'd like to hear it from @SciresM.

EDIT: You know, now that I thinka bout it, he did mention that there was a ton of data whose purposes were unkown. It coudl be that the Switch may be sending up logs of the programs it runs to coincide with the token request to help validate the request itself. Using the Fortnite example from earlier. I tell Ninty that I want to play Fortnite (when in reality I'm wanting to play Overcooked), so I send the request, along with logs, game data, etc to prove I'm actually playing Fortnite, but what they get instead is data relating to Overcooked. They compare to the request, notice it's wrong, and ban me to hell and back.

 

[ghjfdtg]

Pretty simple. It's a chain of trust. First the console and account are validated. Then it validates if you own the game. The cert/ticket it uses is bound to the game and for eShop games to your account aswell. You can't use any valid cert/ticket since it must be from the exact game you want to play and you actually need to have it purchased in case of eShop games. Everything else is a sure fire way to get banned.