Just out of curiosity, would it be possible for Nintendo to patch out Letterbomb and all of the other exploits used to hack the Wii? Obviously they wouldn't due to the age of the console, I was just wondering if it was theoretically possible.
Good and interesting question! Never really thought about this.Just out of curiosity, would it be possible for Nintendo to patch out Letterbomb and all of the other exploits used to hack the Wii? Obviously they wouldn't due to the age of the console, I was just wondering if it was theoretically possible.
They did in fact patch IOS on the Wii U vWii which fixed the exploit used by Hackmii Installer, and the method used by some WAD managers/title installers to patch AHBPROT and install IOSes. For some reason they never released those changes for the original Wii. Anyway, it didn't take long for the homebrew/hacking community to find a way around it. The Wii was not made with security in mind, there are holes everywhere, and because there's little in the way of security in the form of sandboxing, no execute flags and such, gaining code execution from an exploit is easy and once you have it, you have full access. Even if they were to try patching the last public exploits, it's highly likely others would be discovered.Good and interesting question! Never really thought about this.
My guess what could be patched:
My guess what could not be patched:
- IOS – so current HackMiiInstaller can't work
- System Menu to prevent Letterbomb/Wilbrand/str2hax
Bluebomb: No idea?
- Game disc based exploits. Since the discs are obviously read only the exploits will always be there. Mitigations might be possible.
- Same for FlashHax. Wii Shop is nor more – no updates will come out. And if you already have the browser it is vulnerable… Unless a forced disc update would also update the browser (which is not part of a normal update).
- Vulnerable boot1 on older consoles. Flashing bootMii@boot2 with hardware NAND flasher will always work for them.
- Drive firmware to stop for older drives from reading backups. I guess this is impossible…
Yeah, the thing with the hardware flashed is/was a long shot. I think I've read that DeadlyFoez is able to unbrick old Wiis this way. For example here and here. The second one is f…ed up. I mean this part:[…]
Anyway to flash BootMii with a hardware flasher, I think you need the console unique keys, right? Which you can't get without having code execution to begin with. So it's kind of pointless.
5. Use an Infectus - If nothing works then your wii is a "Full Brick". The very last thing you can do is use an Infectus modchip. If you were smart enough to make a nand backup before fucking with your wii then you can manually reprogram is back into the wii, or if your wii was purchased on or around October 2008 because you might have a vulnerable boot1 so you may be able to use an Infectus to manually install bootmii into boot2 and then be able to fix your wii.
I looked into it at one point when someone needed help unbricking their Wii. Remembering mentions that you could flash bootmii with a hardware flasher, I thought that might be the solution, but I found nothing suggesting that you could do so without having a dump of the keys beforehand and no way to get the keys from a bricked console, so I concluded that it's just not possible. The keys are included in a BootMii NAND backup, but that person didn't have one, otherwise it would be possible to fix without BootMii.
I did find some guide suggesting it was possible without the keys. Maybe a known plaintext attack? This is not completely impossible – e.g. works for the 3DS (installing B9S with hardmod) without having the keys.I looked into it at one point when someone needed help unbricking their Wii. Remembering mentions that you could flash bootmii with a hardware flasher, I thought that might be the solution, but I found nothing suggesting that you could do so without having a dump of the keys beforehand and no way to get the keys from a bricked console, so I concluded that it's just not possible. The keys are included in a BootMii NAND backup, but that person didn't have one, otherwise it would be possible to fix without BootMii.
Nintendo patched on Wii U's RC. These hacks dont work.System Menu to prevent Letterbomb/Wilbrand/str2hax