Hacking Discussion Making a game with a hidden exploit

[Deleted member 535703]

I set this as a discussion because it may be a way to hack a Switch in the future and I wanted to know people's thoughts on it.
Without diving too much into the realm of explanations, what if someone made a game but they hid an exploit within it? Something like a secret button combination that allows you to do stuff to your Switch from there.
Sure, Nintendo would take it down, maybe ban people, patch up the exploits and all, but what if someone did that? What are your thoughts on this?

 

[wiiNinja]

Hiding an exploit with an intent to do bad things to another company's software sounds like a criminal offense to me. That said, no software is 100% bug-free, and no software is 100% secured. Prosecution would have to prove intent. I guess I don't understand why anyone would risk losing their reputation, financial resources and freedom to do something like that.

 

[Jayro]

I wanna know why Nintendo keeps leaving backdoors to their systems wide open. So far everything has been easy to hack since the Gamecube, until the iPatched Switches came along... and the 3DS gave us a good run for our money for a good long time before hacks came.

 

[8BitWonder]

I think the closest we got to something like this was when A Dark Room had that hidden ruby interpreter and got pulled from the eShop.

The effort and money involved in getting certified to publish on the platform, get dev hw, make a game with an exploit that passes under Nintendo's radar when they check it before release is better spent on other things.

That and if you actually pulled it off and Nintendo's legal team can prove you made it with the goal of compromising their system you can bet litigation is coming your way.

 

[hippy dave]

Also a game exploit would only give you the same limited privelidges as the game has, so no cfw/piracy/system modifications.

 

[ZachyCatGames]

I wanna know why Nintendo keeps leaving backdoors to their systems wide open. So far everything has been easy to hack since the Gamecube, until the iPatched Switches came along... and the 3DS gave us a good run for our money for a good long time before hacks came.

Switch didn’t have any open “backdoors”…?

 

[Deleted member 535703]

Switch didn’t have any open “backdoors”…?

The Switch had RCM, which was blasted open on Launch consoles.

Oh well, I guess there's always time to wait for an exploit to come around.
Why on Earth do IPATCHED switches suck so much?
Is it just because of how much of an infant the homebrew scene is for it?

 

[masagrator]

The Switch had RCM, which was blasted open on Launch consoles.

Oh well, I guess there's always time to wait for an exploit to come around.
Why on Earth do IPATCHED switches suck so much?
Is it just because of how much of an infant the homebrew scene is for it?

This is not a backdoor and RCM still exists in Mariko. Just bug was fixed that now makes running unsigned payloads not possible.

 

[The Real Jdbye]

I wanna know why Nintendo keeps leaving backdoors to their systems wide open. So far everything has been easy to hack since the Gamecube, until the iPatched Switches came along... and the 3DS gave us a good run for our money for a good long time before hacks came.

The RCM exploit wasn't Nintendo's doing, for once it was someone else's fault. And it's not like it's just Nintendo. The 360, PS3 and PS4 have all been hacked, anything older than that has been blown wide open and the Xbox One probably would have been hacked too if they hadn't made it possible to run "homebrew" without hacking, which means there is not much incentive for homebrew devs to want to hack the system.

 

[ZachyCatGames]

The Switch had RCM, which was blasted open on Launch consoles.

Oh well, I guess there's always time to wait for an exploit to come around.
Why on Earth do IPATCHED switches suck so much?
Is it just because of how much of an infant the homebrew scene is for it?

RCM would be a closed "backdoor".
It's intended to only accept signed binaries and reject unsigned binaries.
Nvidia is incapable of writing secure code, so their USB2 software was fucked and allowed sending shit of any size, allowing one to overwrite the stack with whatever.
This was fixed on patched consoles by limiting the size shit and on mariko by not supporting USB2 in RCM.

 

[Redhorse]

I have long suspected many of these cheaply made 'shovelware' style games were just that; games made with built-in exploits waiting to be found. Just a theory...

 

[Draxzelex]

Why on Earth do IPATCHED switches suck so much?
Is it just because of how much of an infant the homebrew scene is for it?

Because unpatched consoles exist. Why go through the effort of discovering a new exploit that can get patched out when you can just hack an unpatched console with an unpatchable exploit? The homebrew scene is also very far away from being considered in its infancy. Nearly every homebrew application possible has been made and the CFW wars have finally settled on one clear victor.

 

[NecroPractitioner]

Because unpatched consoles exist. Why go through the effort of discovering a new exploit that can get patched out when you can just hack an unpatched console with an unpatchable exploit? The homebrew scene is also very far away from being considered in its infancy. Nearly every homebrew application possible has been made and the CFW wars have finally settled on one clear victor.

Nice to see that your second mortgage is working out for you. Any tips for those of us who don't have a disposable income four digits long?

 

[DinohScene]

I'm 100% certain we've had such a question before....

Nice to see that your second mortgage is working out for you. Any tips for those of us who don't have a disposable income four digits long?

Don't update your console if you want homebrew.
Simple as that.

 

[8BitWonder]

... Any tips for those of us who don't have a disposable income four digits long?

Put aside a small amount of your disposable income after each paycheck until you have enough.

 

[Moquedami]

well, lego games in wii did this all the time

 

[Draxzelex]

Nice to see that your second mortgage is working out for you. Any tips for those of us who don't have a disposable income four digits long?

Don't make bad purchasing decisions? Games are a luxury, not a necessity. And if you do enough research, you could avoid buying an unhackable console.

 

[smf]

what if someone made a game but they hid an exploit within it?

My guess is that anyone who is able to make that much money writing games would not risk their career by doing something so stupid.

 

[FAST6191]

Might as well continue with a bit of thread necromancy.

We saw similar things on iphones and the like -- while not quite as hard to get in it was still a privileged position being used to distribute code the device creators (might I say owners?) did not like. Mostly things like putting hotspots into innocuous things like torch programs, though a handful of emulators also appeared. Some people have had some fun with Steam too by utilising developer grade accounts.

In the case of the Switch it would also have to be chained with another attack -- games for several systems now run at a lower permissions level than the firmware/operating system. Now a fully programmable environment within a game that could be used to fuzz things might be nice for the exploit developers (and those looking to explore hardware), and theoretically you could probably get commercial games going on similar to first things people did abusing file replacement methods (I presume this hypothetical game would have access to all the hardware "just because" or could liven it up lest it end up like the earlier DSi homebrew efforts where aspects of the hardware the base game did not have were not available).
As far as Nintendo's actions. Would probably ban anybody that utilised it for anything too notable, would probably blacklist the game from future firmwares or sandbox it heavily (if not outright remove the aspects of the code in an update and force the update to be applied to run). Don't know if they would sue the devs of the game (I imagine there is some kind of good faith clause in the contract that would open the door for it), and don't know if the devs would be in that much trouble in general (I would say far worse has happened, and some of the things left behind by devs with an axe to grind have been rather shocking for the masses, but this would also fall under the "you don't mess with the money" notion) or wind up on some kind of industry blacklist (maybe Nintendo but plenty of other devs, and the worst they are likely to do here is "they can't work on the port or any exclusives").