Hacking Nintendo Switch Banning Hub & Warning

[binkinator]

The only thing that could be affected is the resale value but I don’t really care about that.

And even that's limited to the amount of time the eShop is actually online...

I don’t plan on keeping an online subscription on this Switch after the 7 day trial ends (since I play online with my other Switch anyway) So I guess it doesn’t really matter. But I’ll report back every now and then to let you guys know how it’s going. No pirated games or anything like that on this switch. Just a few tools like JKSV and EdiZon.

There are anecdotal reports of JKSV and EdiZon alone being OK. At the end of the day though, anything that's not 100% clean adds risk so it will be interesting to hear your updates.

 

[belliq]

When people say any use of CFW while online will get you hacked do they mean playing a game online with someone (eg trading pokemon or visiting someone’s island on animal crossing) or does simply having your switch connected to WiFi while emunand is running put you at risk?

I’ve had mine connected to WiFi for years but yesterday I played online for the first time since I started using atmosphere. My friend wanted some Pokémon with perfect IVs so I made a few legal ones on PKHex. Then I used the 7 day Nintendo Online trial and sent the Pokémons to him. We did it both knowing the risk. Though I’m pretty sure he’ll probably be safe.

More than anything I was just curious about what would happen. If I get banned it won’t happen today or even tomorrow. Only time will tell. But I was just thinking that if I do get banned I could still update my switch and my games through other methods. The only thing I won’t be able to do is play with my friends using that switch —which I was already not doing because I didn’t want to get banned. Kind of ironic. I do have access to a second switch that doesn’t have any CFW and that is what I use to play online anyway.

I went online in sysNAND to run some ACNH mod stuff back in August and am totally fine, berichan has been running a bot that generates items and villagers and gives them to people via Dodo continuously for what, a year now? Sword and Shield mons too. The tool and the Discord to request is all very public, Nintendo could have easily taken them out ages ago but choose not to. There are high-profile streamers that go online with Mario Party and MK8DX aesthetic mods and they're fine as well. It's impossible to know at the moment how Nintendo is going to handle PKHex this gen considering it was just updated, there's potential that they'll ban for online RAM editing in Pokemon as they do for Splatoon 3 but offline save editing? ~it's a mystery~ Your friend will be fine though as they can't prove he knew the Pokemon were hacked.

There's never a 100% safety promise, but if 1) you don't touch wi-fi/online with emuNAND at all 2) you don't cheat in competitive online games and 3) you don't open Splat3 in CFW, things seem to be fine. Tbh now that Ryujinx is so accessible on many machines personally I'd recommend people swap to using that for things they don't want to pay for... you can't accidentally go online with a yo-ho if it's never on your console in the first place.

 

[derteufel]

I went online in sysNAND to run some ACNH mod stuff back in August and am totally fine, berichan has been running a bot that generates items and villagers and gives them to people via Dodo continuously for what, a year now? Sword and Shield mons too. The tool and the Discord to request is all very public, Nintendo could have easily taken them out ages ago but choose not to. There are high-profile streamers that go online with Mario Party and MK8DX aesthetic mods and they're fine as well. It's impossible to know at the moment how Nintendo is going to handle PKHex this gen considering it was just updated, there's potential that they'll ban for online RAM editing in Pokemon as they do for Splatoon 3 but offline save editing? ~it's a mystery~ Your friend will be fine though as they can't prove he knew the Pokemon were hacked.

There's never a 100% safety promise, but if 1) you don't touch wi-fi/online with emuNAND at all 2) you don't cheat in competitive online games and 3) you don't open Splat3 in CFW, things seem to be fine. Tbh now that Ryujinx is so accessible on many machines personally I'd recommend people swap to using that for things they don't want to pay for... you can't accidentally go online with a yo-ho if it's never on your console in the first place.

I forgot about those twitch treasure islands that never seem to get banned. What kind of protection do you use when going online?

 

[belliq]

I forgot about those twitch treasure islands that never seem to get banned. What kind of protection do you use when going online?

Nothing, it's not like you can use online multiplayer when 90DNS is up. Keep in mind I've only booted into sysNAND a handful of times just to do ACNH mods and JKSV and have only gone online with ACNH (because there's a year of evidence that they don't care), otherwise I'm always in stock. I think people who use emuNAND at all should be way more careful but my console doesn't have anything pirated, I've never even booted into it.

 

[mkwra]

They started cracking down on cheaters in mk8dx btw. I guess the DLC and the money they make is motivating them

 

[halfashark]

They started cracking down on cheaters in mk8dx btw. I guess the DLC and the money they make is motivating them

Splatoon 3, too. Quite a few of my friends who either evaded the last ban wave or claimed to "only use the printer" have gotten dinged in just the last 24 hours. Glad I stuck to my guns and got a pico instead to print my posts.

 

[mkwra]

I got caught in the latest banwave for MK8DX. My offence? Item hacks.

 

[binkinator]

Splatoon 3, too. Quite a few of my friends who either evaded the last ban wave or claimed to "only use the printer" have gotten dinged in just the last 24 hours. Glad I stuck to my guns and got a pico instead to print my posts.

Are you saying that you CAN or CAN NOT be banned for automated posting? I started using an Arduino Uno just last week to automate posts. Is there a hack to do posts that’s getting people hemmed up?

Post automatically merged: Dec 12, 2022

I got caught in the latest banwave for MK8DX. My offence? Item hacks.

Just a software ban for MK8…at least you Switch is still unbanned…or is it?

Post automatically merged: Dec 12, 2022

Do software ban waves coincide with console ban waves?

 

[belliq]

Are you saying that you CAN or CAN NOT be banned for automated posting? I started using an Arduino Uno just last week to automate posts. Is there a hack to do posts that’s getting people hemmed up?

They likely used ShiverBot aka going online with CFW. Any automation that goes through bluetooth or USB should be fine as you're not breaking TOS by modifying hardware or software, you're just using a third-party controller. The majority of really good artwork in the trilogy has been done that way so they would have taken action a long time ago were they concerned about it.

 

[gouki99]

It's been roughly two years since I hacked my Switch.

I run sys-clk with everything, CFW on sysnand. No pirated content. No online cheats. Use JKSV and ftp to send my saves back and forth between emulator and the console. Play online games and use the eShop on the regular.

No ban.

 

[halfashark]

They likely used ShiverBot aka going online with CFW. Any automation that goes through bluetooth or USB should be fine as you're not breaking TOS by modifying hardware or software, you're just using a third-party controller. The majority of really good artwork in the trilogy has been done that way so they would have taken action a long time ago were they concerned about it.

ayep. this.
me and my partner have been using a pico to print posts for a while now that are clearly not drawn or at the very least not drawn on the switch itself and we haven't gotten any ban. i suspect in part because the resolution is so small that it wouldn't be difficult to just watch a few TV shows while punching in each individual dot in manually so there's no way to tell -- but also the fact that 3rd party controllers aren't banned and there's no rule that states said controller cannot draw for you in splatoon.

 

[derteufel]

Been about a month now since Ive been making "legal" pokemon on PkHex and trading them to my friends online. No ban yet thankfully. Ive always had my Switch connected to the internet, but this is my first time actually having a Nintendo Online subscription.

 

[binkinator]

So, I am tired of living with the fear of the unknown.
To remove some of the fear uncertainty and doubt I am willing to (potentially) take one for the team.

I’m on a V1 switch w/ a clean Sysnand that I will use for Online testing.

Atmosphere 15.0.0​

Hekate 5.9.0​

​

Spoiler: hekate_ipl - stock

[Stock SysNAND]
fss0=atmosphere/package3
stock=1
emummc_force_disable=1
icon=/graphics/icons/current/stock.bmp
id=sysn

My emunand has the following but never goes Online and will not be a part of this test.

Latest Sigpatches​

Exosphere​

dns:mitm​

Spoiler: hekate_ipl - emunand

[Atmosphere CFW]
payload=bootloader/payloads/fusee.bin
emummcforce=1
kip1patch=nosigchk
kip1=atmosphere/kip_patches/*
logopath=/graphics/splash/atmosphere.bmp
icon=/graphics/icons/current/atmosphere.bmp
id=atmo

Here’s the background…

A while ago I updated my eMMC to 256G and restored a copy of my original Sysnand onto it.

My intent is to isolate precisely what actions get me banned so I can unshroud the mystery around eMMC upgrades.

I’m planning to continue to go Online through the experiment, both playing games and visiting the eShop and doing FW upgrades as they are released.

Scenarios I want to test while I wait for the Ban Hammer (tm) to come crashing down:

1. go Online with my clean (but replaced hardware) eMMC - started 25 OCT 22
2. expand my user partition to consume more of the unused space - not yet started
3. install Android/L4T on separate partitions in the remaining space - not yet started

My assumptions are as follows:

• My Switch will definitely log that its hardware was changed. This is a given based on reading through the telemetry payload docs. I don’t believe this will warrant a ban because this is what would happen if you took your Switch in to be repaired and it needed a new eMMC.
• The change in size of the partition will also be noticed but I assume that since my Sysnand has nothing related to piracy, cheating or hacking on it, my Switch will be continued to be allowed to participate Online.
• The additional Android/Ubuntu partitions might be noticed by Ninty but again since the new partitions are in no way untoward I expect to continue to be able to communicate Online.

My question to the thread is this:

Will 3 months between tests be enough time to allow any potential flagging/banning cycles?

I’m full on 1, 2 and 3 now.

(1) Expanded eMMC w/ (2)slightly larger :USER partition than normal allocated to official Ninty stuff w/ (3)both android and L4T installed in the remaining space.

Been going Online every day to check eshop, buy games and play Online games. So far so good.

 

[spriteice]

Welp, I accidentally just connected my secondary Switch Lite's emuMMC to the internet without dns.mitm enabled after updating atmosphere (forgot to re-copy the hosts file).

I had proinfo blanked using exosphere, although I have hbmenu installed through an nsp forwarder (stupid I know).

Wish me luck, although I think I may be banned in the next wave.

 

[Draxzelex]

I recently bought a new OLED switch to mod my old v1 switch. I did a dual nand setup used exosphere , use the weird bin thing that prevents me from using Nintendo services even though I didn’t need to. But I forgot to delete my user before I modded it. Will my account or my console get banned ? Or both regardless I only really wanted to use cfw for dumping games and emulation. I already deleted my main user with my main account since I use that with the OLED switch to play online

Bans only occur if you went online after using CFW/homebrew. As long as you didn't do that, you would be fine. Even in the event you forgot to delete your user, that won't change the chances of a ban since you can get banned without a user. If you're worried about an account ban, those don't traditionally happen unless you're involved with fraud.

 

[blitz45677]

Bans only occur if you went online after using CFW/homebrew. As long as you didn't do that, you would be fine. Even in the event you forgot to delete your user, that won't change the chances of a ban since you can get banned without a user. If you're worried about an account ban, those don't traditionally happen unless you're involved with fraud.

Thanks lad I really only cared about my account getting possibly banned and not really the console since I bought the OLED

 

[binkinator]

Welp, I accidentally just connected my secondary Switch Lite's emuMMC to the internet without dns.mitm enabled after updating atmosphere (forgot to re-copy the hosts file).

I had proinfo blanked using exosphere, although I have hbmenu installed through an nsp forwarder (stupid I know).

Wish me luck, although I think I may be banned in the next wave.

If your Prodinfo was blank you technically never handed over your ID. You were able to connect but they might not know it was you. Not saying you can’t still be got, but there are anecdotal stories of people only using Incognito_RCM and not being banned for years. I personally think you have a decent shot at being OK.

 

[xIce101x]

Welp, I accidentally just connected my secondary Switch Lite's emuMMC to the internet without dns.mitm enabled after updating atmosphere (forgot to re-copy the hosts file).

I had proinfo blanked using exosphere, although I have hbmenu installed through an nsp forwarder (stupid I know).

Wish me luck, although I think I may be banned in the next wave.

I’ve never used any DNS hosts and haven’t been banned using a blanked prodinfo. You should be fine

 

[spriteice]

If your Prodinfo was blank you technically never handed over your ID. You were able to connect but they might not know it was you. Not saying you can’t still be got, but there are anecdotal stories of people only using Incognito_RCM and not being banned for years. I personally think you have a decent shot at being OK.

I’ve never used any DNS hosts and haven’t been banned using a blanked prodinfo. You should be fine

That's reassuring, although if I do end up getting banned it's not the end of the world, as it is my secondary switch with a burner Nintendo account tied to it. It's just annoying that one momentary slip up could cause it.

Luckily my main OLED emuMMC has never seen the internet and never will, I am absolutely not risking that console by ever connecting the emuMMC to the internet or booting sysNAND with CFW.

 

[binkinator]

I’m full on 1, 2 and 3 now.

(1) Expanded eMMC w/ (2)slightly larger :USER partition than normal allocated to official Ninty stuff w/ (3)both android and L4T installed in the remaining space.

Been going Online every day to check eshop, buy games and play Online games. So far so good.

I feel like I’m going to jinx myself, but here‘s to another 30 days of clean living and going Online every day w/ my modded Switch.




Huge eMMC, large HOS partition, bunch of Androld partitions and an L4T partition.

I’m beginning to think that as long as I’m not doing pirate stuff, and I simply have a replacement Nand, that Ninty doesn’t see it as an infraction. I mean, what if my switch Nand broke and I took it in to a shop and they repaired my broken Nand for me by replacing it with whatever they had in the shop? I think right to repair would apply and as long as I keep my nose clean and just play like normal…it’s OK?

Are there any confirmed reports of people being banned for having large Nands? (giggidy)