Hacking Question Installing CFW down the road

[P4RT1CLEM4N]

Question about hacking down the road.. I have two Nintendo Switches today linked to the same Nintendo Account:

• Switch #1 = an older, hack-able model on 8.1.0
• Switch #2 = a Switch Lite up-to-date on 9.0.1

I'm not really interested in hacking Switch #1 today as I would like to be able to freely transfer save files between Switch #1 and Switch #2. However, down the road when the Switch console life-cycle is winding down, I'd like to retain the flexibility to install CFW on Switch #1. So I'd rather not do something today that will prevent me from hacking Switch #1 later.
A few questions and thoughts I have on the matter that I'd appreciate your input on:

• Is there anything I can do today to make my life easier down the road if and when I decide to hack Switch #1?
  • E.g., would it be wise to create a back-up of Switch #1's NAND today on 8.1.0 before I update it to the latest firmware?
    • Would creating a back-up of my NAND and nothing else put Switch #1 at risk of being banned today?
    • If so, does putting Switch #1 at risk also put Switch #2 at risk since they're linked to the same Nintendo Account?
• Will updating to the latest firmware somehow prevent Switch #1 from being hack-able or is the vulnerability always present?
• Somewhat unrelated to hacking: I'm assuming freely transferring save data between two consoles is do-able and relatively easy; is this a safe assumption?

To those of you with experience, what is your advised course of action? Your advice and thoughts are much appreciated

 

[Rahkeesh]

NAND backups never hurt, but the only known software exploit currently requires 4.1.0, and theoretically is completely fixed in 8.0. So there's not much special about 8.1 vs 9.01 right now.

If you update through official means (which you have to without CFW), firmware updates will periodically burn fuses. This is Nintendo's way of preventing downgrades because an older firmware that sees too many burnt fuses will refuse to boot. So I wouldn't expect to launch pre-8.x right now, and if you update you will probably be locked to 9.x+

If you truly have a hackable switch though, you can always boot payloads via a jig/paperclip. It's just a matter of the CFW authors keeping up with the official firmware updates.

 

[drsleep]

Would creating a back-up of my NAND and nothing else put Switch #1 at risk of being banned today?

No it would not. Nintendo finds hackers by reading error messages which shouldn't occur during the use of the OFW and by comparing signatures. As creating a backup through hekate (and/or Lockpick) happens before booting into any firmware, you are absolutely safe to go. From there you can launch into OFW and Nintendo will never find out that you've backed up your NAND. If you connect to the Nintendo servers while using a CFW however, the chance of getting hacked is quite high.

If so, does putting Switch #1 at risk also put Switch #2 at risk since they're linked to the same Nintendo Account?

Yes. Although it happens extremely rarely, Nintendo already banned a handful of hackers by their Nintendo Network ID or their Nintendo accounts. I'd say you have nothing to worry though and if you're not using CFW you'll not get banned anyway.

Coming back to your first question "would it be wise to create a backup" I'd say honestly not. You don't need a NAND backup if you don't plan to hack your system right now. Your hardware vulnerability won't go away and you can't downgrade by just NAND backup anyway, as Rahkeesh already explained.

Freely transferring save data between two unhacked systems is actually harder than it sounds. There is the Nintendo Recovery Mode way of doing that but I believe it deletes the files on one system and then there is the online cloud way of doing it but it doesn't work on all games.

 

[P4RT1CLEM4N]

Thanks for the responses; very helpful!

I've done some research and talked to folks in the community since my original post. Apparently I can create a two partitions on Switch #1 (a very common practice seemingly). The first partition contains clean sysNAND that's always up-to-date and safe to go online. The second partition is emuNAND with homebrew/CFW that will stay completely offline. Can you confirm this is possible? A concern I originally had was that Nintendo could still somehow detect my Switch was hacked through online use of my clean sysNAND partition, but I don't think that's possible; the partitions are completely isolated.. A feature I wanted to retain was the ability to freely send/receive save files to clean Switch #2; if I can safely go online with the clean partition of Switch #1, this should be no problem. However, I will not be able to as easily transfer saves files to/from Switch #1's emuNAND.. If I've misspoke at all or and misunderstanding, please correct me!

I'm assuming the emuNAND partition will be "modeled" after my clean sysNAND back-up.. If true, you're saying there's really no benefit to create my emuNAND based on version 8.1.0 vs 9.0.1, right? I'd think that as long as 9.0.1 is supported by CFW devs, it'd be in my best interest to update Switch #1 to 9.0.1 before creating my emuNAND?

Finally, is the CFW version update-able through unofficial means to mimic the latest firmware version?