Hacking Gateway update regarding rumors

[McHaggis]

After the bricks happened it only took devs a few hours to notice the possibility and a day to confirm the code itself, so of the clones had any sort of knowledge at all they too should of spotted the code, but nope they just blindly left it to THEIR customers to find out

This isn't The Matrix, we can't just look at compiled code and have our brains reverse engineer it instantly. It took the hackers on IRC a while to find it, and they were actually looking for the bricking code.


As I said in another post, too, it's dangerous to play with code like this. One small bug in their checksum functions and they could have bricked legitimate Gateway owners everywhere. It's happened before. It's safer for everyone just not to do it.

Here, Chinese physical shops sell DS flashcards, but just R4s, because people don't know about anything else (they know what an "R4" is, but not a "flashcard"). Also, this way they can overprice them (since R4s are all cheap clones) and make easy money from the unaware customers (mostly children or their parents, other kinds of people would inform themselves better on the internet).

Yeah, that's my point. There's going to be some innocent consumers at risk here too.

Honestly, I don't know what's worse, what Gateway did or fanboys trying to justify it afterwards.

 

[Lunai]

A simple change of like 2 bytes isn't gonna cause a brick.
It has to fail a set of security checks.
And I'm sure gateway has made some sanity check to see its modified or corrupt.

 

[gamesquest1]

Yawn.....stooges are boring....clones got caught with their pants down and got humiliated nothing to defend


For all other questions or attempts to start a flame war...please refer to the first post

 

[Wisenheimer]

Not quite. There is a certain order the commands in the loader are done.

if: Checksum matches
-Bricker = false
if: Checksum doesn't match
-Exit Menu
--Crash 3DS
-Bricker = True
Load menu

What most flashcart cloners are doing is probably disabling the commands exit menu and crash 3ds.
Legitimate gateway users are completely safe. I was so sure of myself that I took my launcher and edited a few bytes and tried, multiple times, to see if it would brick.
Different bytes changed each time, result, no brick.



So the only ones to blame are the people using modified launchers instead of creating their own.

It is pretty clear they want to do this thing on the sly, so they are clearly not bricking the system every time the software runs. They are likely using some random event to do it. If there is any function that checks the checksum and then crashes the system if it fails, every user is at risk because RAM is not immutable, especially the non-parity RAM they use in the 3DS.

 

[ILOVETOPLAYNESGA]

Just wanted to say, these arguments kind of remind me of the GTA Hot Coffee Incident...

It was most entertaining to read through what everyone else said so I figured why not say something too.

 

[Kayday]

I wonder if people realize that when you hack your system, you take on a chance of it being damaged whether software or hardware related? You take the risk when you go this route. If don't want any chance of your device breaking, stay legit.

 

[Wisenheimer]

Oh, and taken from another poster in another thread:

http://www.elotrolado.net/hilo_ho-bricks-en-3ds-gateway-incluyo-codigo-malicioso-en-2-0b2_1972148

Users are reporting that this bricking code is not just affecting "clone cards" but also Gateway users as well.

Like I wrote before, I never much cared for Gateway since their business seemed to be based around learning a single exploit and trying to make as much money off of it as possible by enabling piracy and very little else. Sure, there may be some legitimate users who want to be able to use legitimate backups or region-free, but Gateway has shown absolutely no interest in supporting legitimate homebrew applications.

But that does not mean that Gateway and other clone card users who have had their consoles bricked "deserve it" for being pirates. If the allegations are true (and the evidence seems to suggest that they are), it is a deliberate and malicious act that, if you were ever able to get these guys into a US court, would be almost certainly result in a ruling of liability for every destroyed console. It might even be felony vandalism in some US States.

 

[kyogre123]

Oh, and taken from another poster in another thread:

http://www.elotrolado.net/hilo_ho-bricks-en-3ds-gateway-incluyo-codigo-malicioso-en-2-0b2_1972148

Users are reporting that this bricking code is not just affecting "clone cards" but also Gateway users as well.

Like I wrote before, I never much cared for Gateway since their business seemed to be based around learning a single exploit and trying to make as much money off of it as possible by enabling piracy and very little else. Sure, there may be some legitimate users who want to be able to use legitimate backups or region-free, but Gateway has shown absolutely no interest in supporting legitimate homebrew applications.

But that does not mean that Gateway and other clone card users who have had their consoles bricked "deserve it" for being pirates. If the allegations are true (and the evidence seems to suggest that they are), it is a deliberate and malicious act that, if you were ever able to get these guys into a US court, would be almost certainly result in a ruling of liability for every destroyed console. It might even be felony vandalism in some US States.

They don't even know the true reason behind that case, and as far as I understood, it is only one there.

 

[gamesquest1]

Well it's all very Simple, if you don't like the players don't play the game

 

[Wisenheimer]

They don't even know the true reason behind that case, and as far as I understood, it is only one there.

They list two bricks. Now, it is not a very large sample size, so you would probably not get a .05 P-value, but 2 gateways out of 32 bricks would mean that for about every 100 3DS's that are bricked, six of them are using Gateway Flashcards.

 

[bailli]

Hmmm new member surprise surprise

Obviously people don't get it or they wouldn't still being crying about how gateway could possibly do it to the poor clones.

Hm, your aren't exactly the longest member of this community either... Gateway crew member? (But only for marketing/social influence, it is obvious your technical background is lacking...)
And roughly half of your awesome 200+ postings consist of "Gateway is awesome - I knew it all along - you dirty clone card supporters got what you deserve - Gateway's security checks to not brick a console with untouched launcher.dat are infallible"

So let's summarize: No 3DS game released until today will brick your console! Stay with the original authors and developers!

If you like my post buy yourself a game!

EDIT: For everybody requesting the "bricking code" instead the pseudo code (from neimod?/yellows8?/whatever)

.....
.....
Hm okay maybe this is the 3rd image a google search for "asm code" gives, but for most of the people asking for code this should suffice...

 

[badbob001]

I still find it hard to believe that Gateway would create code that would irreversibly damage a 3DS. I still rather see someone simply post the code in question for all to see than to see so many 'proofs' based on circumstantial evidence. Certainly from the code, we can determine when the bricks occur. I seriously doubt it's completely random and out of control.

So if homebrew ever comes to the 3DS, we will have to be afraid of bricking code hidden in apps? We'll soon have flashcards that offer virus protection! I would love to see the big name 3DS hackers show a video that proves that they can even access the component that people are claiming to cause the bricks.

But if it is true that Gateway put in this kill code, then they must be pretty furious about the clones. There aren't an infinite number of 4.x units out there and every bricked unit is one less customer. Even if someone bought a competing product, that person is still a potential future customer. I myself went through three different DS flash cards because I saw a better product than my existing one.

Maybe I've watched too many chinese dramas, but I hope gangsters don't show up at the gateway office with butcher knives hidden in newspapers.

 

[Wisenheimer]

I still find it hard to believe that Gateway would create code that would irreversibly damage a 3DS. I still rather see someone simply post the code in question for all to see than to see so many 'proofs' based on circumstantial evidence. Certainly from the code, we can determine when the bricks occur. I seriously doubt it's completely random and out of control.

So if homebrew ever comes to the 3DS, we will have to be afraid of bricking code hidden in apps? We'll soon have flashcards that offer virus protection! I would love to see the big name 3DS hackers show a video that proves that they can even access the component that people are claiming to cause the bricks.

But if it is true that Gateway put in this kill code, then they must be pretty furious about the clones. There aren't an infinite number of 4.x units out there and every bricked unit is one less customer. Even if someone bought a competing product, that person is still a potential future customer. I myself went through three different DS flash cards because I saw a better product than my existing one.

Maybe I've watched too many chinese dramas, but I hope gangsters don't show up at the gateway office with butcher knives hidden in newspapers.

You realize that the only people who have the source code are Gateway, right? You can run the assembled program through something like a disassembler or decompiler to get an idea of what is going on (if you are good with that sort of low-level thing, which is a fairly rare skill), and apparently someone has. But, if you are expecting something written in a higher level language like C, that is not going to happen unless you somehow get the code from Gateway.

 

[gamesquest1]

Yawwwwnnnnnnnnn...........*blah blah* something about being an expert.....yeah right.....

Blah blah blah....this thread is just going in circles with idiots chiming in to act all elitist but not actually adding anything.......except maybe trying to pour petrol on a flame war.....this thread seriously needs locking, pretty much everything past the first page is just crybaby drivel which adds nothing to anything

 

[bailli]

I sincerely hope you include myself when you talk about the people who try to fuel the flame war or else my posting would have been completely pointless.

Your postings on the other hand always add lots of new insights into the discussion.

 

[gamesquest1]

Case and point...nothing constructive has been achieved the actual first post said gateway doesn't care....so why is there 18 pages of people debating it?....they don't care it's that simple

 

[escherbach]

so let me get this straight gateway put in their firmware a bricking code for those who have cloned flash kits? and if you had a 3dslink or r4 clone of gateway your 3ds would brick due to the cloned firmware?

It appears that Gateway were a bit more sneaky than that.
They put code in launcher.dat which runs fine if not amended - and even if your SD card gets corrupted the code will just cause a crash - THERE IS NO WAY A GENUINE GATEWAY CARD will brick your 3DS. (Edit - unless you use a modified launcher rather than the official gateway one)

HOWEVER - they booby trapped the code logic so that naive tampering would lead to a bricking routine being called - activated by a random number test seeded by a date (not clear to me if this is system date or launcher.dat modification date - hence resetting your console's sytem date back a couple of years may not be a solution)

In effect - the cloners activated the booby trap by not sufficently checking the effect of their modified code.

Gateway can claim that they have warned people that clones can not be guaranteed to be safe - but this was a very dodgy action by them imho

Note that they have not denied this on their official site - and they must be aware of the shit they have stirred up.

 

[Zanoab]

Gateway is impersonating a guard for the 3DS and did the research to get the keys/codes to gain access. This situation is just clones trying to steal Gateway's business of letting unauthorized people in by stealing a copy of their latest keys/codes. It isn't Gateway's fault that their competition ripped them off and sold the booby trapped keys/codes without proper research on how they work.

 

[osirisjem]

Had the clone team done some actual WORK, like testing, this would have all been avoided.

There is no information to suggest they know how.

 

[osirisjem]

but this was a very dodgy action by them imho

Dodgy yes.
Just not as dodgy as what r4i and the other Gateway clones do.