from what i read it just has a little security routine run at bootup.......how easy that will be for gateway to patch i have no idea, but im sure they looked before posting that they will have a fix out soon, so they are probably pretty confident it can be easily patched/bypassed
you're confusing 3ds and new3ds firmware. the only thing about the 3ds firmware is that all the patch locations changed so they need to go in and fix them and rebuild their firmware.