NONE of it's 'safer'. Period. The only "safe" way to keep from getting banned is not to hack your Switch.
All the bullcrap campaigning about what's 'safer' now that Adubbz, The4N, Rei and the other devs have everything out for free is getting old.
Really no telling who to trust on this board, especially when certain things are said to have been around for years.
Totally agree with you. I was into the Wii U scene long ago and we had many solid info there, but the Switch scene looks a mess.Trouble is with this thread we have to many chiefs and not enough Indians! and way to many newbies that have been here for 5 minutes that seem to know everything about the game. This certificate issue has been replicated over many of Nintendo’s consoles over the years which I will say I have been involved in ever since so @gutoblauth believe who you like but I will say some of these guys think they know everything but they don’t. All they do is read what a few newbie devs write about and bamn, god damn don’t they know it all.
These are the sorts of comments I am talking about newbies that have been in the game 5 minutes and read up and think they know it all!Whoa slow down there. Before we write off what everyone else is saying, there is objective evidence to support that Nintendo has stepped up their game. For starters, we can no longer use Freeshop without a risk of getting banned like the 3DS days. That is because Nintendo embedded console certificates into every Switch to track every download it makes. Source
Next, we have the issue of injecting certificates/headers into backups to enable online play. Nintendo implemented additional checks for headers/certificates that if they don't match, the user gets flagged (not immediately banned) making it unsafe to do so. Multiple people were banned for doing so already. Source
Lastly, the sources for both of those reddit threads I provided that detail how the Switch's security has changed were written by a hacker known as SciresM. The same hacker who completely hacked the 3DS with B9S and the one who is currently developing Atmosphere of which all CFWs for the Switch is somewhat based off of. I believe his reputation speaks for itself; there isn't a single person in this community who would believe he is lying nor making anything up to promote Nintendo.
While I will agree that Nintendo were rather lax with their security in the past, there are multiple signs from all directions that things are different with the Switch. The only counter-evidence to this are subjective experiences of people avoiding a ban thus far but this is not that far-fetched. There has only ever been one real banwave so far and its only been a few months since bans have started being distributed. Nintendo can continue pumping out newer firmware updates that track hacks better and better in an effort to catch hackers then ban them. You can choose to ignore the warnings that I and the rest of the community are pumping out or you can err on the side of safety if you know what you are doing; the choice is yours to make.
I've asked about a safer way, not the safest, so I'm aware about what can happen.
Btw, Wii U hacking is pretty safe when your not cheating online... I don't know any major (even minor) ban for doing Homebrew on it. The problem is that there are really stupid kiddos who try to do shady things or even counter the path people advise to.
Totally agree with you. I was into the Wii U scene long ago and we had many solid info there, but the Switch scene looks a mess.
Also people doing what their are told not to do, going in the opposite way, making things hard to comprehend.
I'm going at a slow pace here, grabbing the most useful infos I can get, but sometimes I use more effort to filter than read, so I get tired of this.
Is there any thread/discord server or something like this you would recommend me to read about the Switch hacks?
I'm using SXOS and atmosphere bootet over Hekate. I'm using both of them since they are available for a wider audience, but I'm careful every time a new firmware or cfw gets released, I build the atmosphere kips myself most of the time to get fixes faster, and I keep an eye on known metadata send to nintendo which could flag me. Currently I'm always including atmospheres creport in every cfw I use, to reduce the number of logs created from crashes. I never used romfs, nsp or xci piracy, and I'm only using dumps in their original format (so only xci) in ways where they look legit ( so no ehsop titles on switches where the account does not own it).
I'm playing online using my own gamecard dumps, since the card certs gets properly read and send when using sxos. Currently even my second switch, which I use to test stuff that could be more dangerous, isn't banned yet, but I'm still prepeared to be banned at any time in the future on both switches.
But my tips to keep the ban risk as low as possible:
So like I and many others said, you are never 100% save from a ban unless you stay on your stock cfw and don't use any kind of homebrew, but if you want to use backups and/or homebrew, because of their advantages, be careful about your actions and keep an eye on the scene
- Follow the scene and don't be the first one to test updates and software when you don't know what you do
- Always use the cfw parts, that prevent some kind of telemtry from happening, like Creport (even works on sxos to my knowledge)
- Don't delete the error logs if you are on 5.x+ unless you think there maybe be something really dangerous in it, because nintendo logs the number of crash reports and error messages created, and it could be detectable if they don't match.
- Don't pirate, or be at least very careful about it (keep your switch completely offline) , since there are many ways info about the wrong cert or ticket can get to nintendo.
- Don't use cdn downloaders with your switches certificate, nitendo can see when you download things you don't own.
- Don't use your own dumps in a way where they don't look like their original medium and think you can go online with them
- Always be prepeared that something got overlooked by people in the scene which could lead to your Switch getting banned even without piracy.