Hacking Could we have a private (or on-console) Nintendo Online verification server?

[umibiraki]

The idea being that games like NES/SNES Online, Tetris 99, etc. that check for your Nintendo Switch Online subscription status, could be made to hit this server instead of Nintendo's official one; and the server could just auto-respond "yes, this user has an active subscription" to any such request. More for the sake of banned consoles than for avoiding the subscription fee.

Of course, this wouldn't enable these games to actually play online, since it'd only be a verification server, not a lobby server or whatever else these games need. But it'd at least let you use the offline features of these games.

To be clear, I'm just asking whether this is possible in theory. If it is, I could probably step up to build it myself. But I'd like to know if there would be any obvious already-well-known roadblocks, before doing a bunch of research and experimentation just to discover them myself.

 

[Foodchain]

In theory? Absolutely. This is in fact how things like 90DNS work. Software on the switch is programmed to connect to servers by name (eg: nintendo.com).The switch knows what IP address nintendo.com should resolve to by polling a DNS (domain name server). Most DNS get their results from global name servers and just kind of pass the info on. It is possible to set up your own DNS which can redirect your requests to whatever result you want.

So yeah, by setting up a DNS and then telling the switch to use that DNS in network settings you can redirect traffic to a server you have control over.

That auto response of "yes" would be very easy to code, but be completely meaningless to your Switch. If the Switch was looking for a simple "Yes", then this would be trivial. It isn't though. To figure out what we need to respond with, we need to do some extensive reverse engineering, and therein lies the challenge. The point is, there's way more information going back and forth than a simple "Yes".

 

[linuxares]

Sure you just need to first crack the SSL or Strip it, then somehow make a server that say "OKEY!" when requested with subscription. Then for example with Tetris 99, make sure it connects to the right server(s), if it's not Nintendo's own.

 

[aarstar]

Doesn't an account linking app like Linkalho get around this for offline features? I know for example I can start the latest updates of NES/SNES Online using an account linked by app.