i'm curious to hear a realistic situation where someone does this to access a pin locked 3DS
I hope theft counts as a realistic (and common) situation. Pickpocket grabs console, runs away, turns it on and get this message (or error message from their perspective):
Enter the PIN using ABXY and the DPad to proceed.
Press START to shutdown, SELECT to clear
The first line as search term gave me an old Reddit thread as top result with duckduckgo, startpage and google (Yes I know, startpage uses google, but sometimes I get different results). While this thread is old and talks about A9LH, all needed information is mentioned: Booting from NAND, booting from SD, deleting file.
This is enough to give an attacker with no prior knowledge about 3DS and Luma CFW the idea, that an easy bypass is possible. Sooner or later they will find the official Github page and the wiki
github.com/LumaTeam/Luma3DS/wiki/Optional-features said:
- PIN lock:Require a PIN to be entered before continuing boot. A message can be displayed on the bottom screen at the PIN input screen by placing a text file named pinmessage.txt in /luma (800 characters maximum!). Has four options:
- Off: No PIN enabled, continue boot normally.
- 4: Require a 4 digit PIN.
- 6: Require a 6 digit PIN.
- 8: Require a 8 digit PIN.
- Note: This is more effective as child-proofing than as a complete theft deterrent; a thief could bypass this as easily as deleting Luma3DS' configuration files, changing the boot.firm payload on the SD card (or, if using Luma3DS on CTRNAND, inserting an SD card with a boot.firm on its root, since boot9strap shows priority to the SD card. Even Luma3DS installed in FIRM0/1 isn't completely "safe"; it could be bypassed easily with ntrboot or similar methods.
The official manual tells right away how to get rid of the lock.
It literally takes the thief less than five minutes to remove the PIN and put them in a position to sell the stolen good (good condition 3DS aren't exactly cheap at the moment).
If we have good(?) or bad(?) luck (depends on the view), the search engines will now pick up
this thread as a manual how to bypass the Luma3DS PIN code.
⟹ Luma3DS PIN is not an effective theft deterrent.