Just a short Public Service Announcement for our users, particularly the ones who like their Homebrew on Nintendo platforms. The Homebrew community tends to be positive and participating in it is a recipe for a good time, but no group of people is free of bad actors with too much time on their hands. We have reason to believe that in the near future we'll see a lot of suspicious uploads of innocent-looking applications that are actually concealed console brickers and viruses. We came across a disconcerting threat against our site, among others, made by a Wii malware creator.

The safety of our users is our number one priority, so we strongly urge forum-goers to be weary of applications uploaded to the site recently, particularly if they come from relatively new accounts. We apologise for this inconvenience, but sadly there is little we can do besides staying vigilant and dealing swiftly with any and all suspicious content.

Stay safe, and keep on Tempin'!

 

[Foxi4]

You're most welcome. You guys do your thing and we'll do ours.

 

[grunt22fox]

I don't know if I'm particularly bothered by how this person feels - if that's how he gets his jollies, that's his deal. With that said, you have a point - we'll remove the quote so that it is no longer attributed to him and his "creations". I hope that resolves the issue. I understand that your intentions are to reduce the level of attention he's getting, but that doesn't fully align with my intention of informing users about possible harm coming their way, which of course may or may not happen. At the end of the day, scene drama and "clowning" doesn't move the needle one bit on my radar, possible damage done to decides of our users does, so they deserve to be informed.

[REDACTED FOR ONLINE PRIVACY]

 

[Artuto]

While I agree this is an asshole move to create a program to brick and screw NANDs and installations; we should not give (more) attention to him because thats just going to make him "stronger".

Redacting the names is just useless because you can just search the text in GitHub and the repo and the author will appear.

Please unpin this, just panickes users that are browsing normally in GBATemp and out of the blue they see a post without major information about someone who is distributing a bricker, if they are smart enough they will not run homebrew from untrusted sources, but others will definitely fall.

 

[Foxi4]

While I agree this is an asshole move to create a program to brick and screw NANDs and installations; we should not give (more) attention to him because thats just going to make him "stronger".

Redacting the names is just useless because you can just search the text in GitHub and the repo and the author will appear.

Please unpin this, just panickes users that are browsing normally in GBATemp and out of the blue they see a post without major information about someone who is distributing a bricker, if they are smart enough they will not run homebrew from untrusted sources, but others will definitely fall.

The text has been removed for that reason, I haven't considered that originally. Sweeping the problem under the carpet is like being ill and not going to the hospital because "that's where people go to die" - if there is a potential outbreak coming soon, courtesy of a troll with too much time on his hands, it's better to be informed.

 

[Deleted User]

this is why i don't download from this site's download center, nothing bad about the center but i just like to be safe and download from the official sources.

 

[raxadian]

So terrorists wants to destroy wiis?

Just to be assholes it seems.

 

[RivenMain]

I'm not overly against the practices of malware. It's kinda the opposite approach to instead of allowing people to beg for hacks and piracy they'd rather let them know they are a threat. My only issue is the threat on the site. More frankly the amount of control they have to ddos.

 

[gemsticks]

Damn, right when I was going to try to learn to make a basic homebrew app for the wii

 

[wolf-snake]

*Laughs in Wii U*

 

[dhtdht020]

Damn, right when I was going to try to learn to make a basic homebrew app for the wii

It's a perfect time to do so!
Don't let the possibilty of malware demotivate you, we had those on PCs for years

 

[bandithedoge]

Yet another reason to have your eyes open all the time and not run random shit with no source.

 

[RandomUser]

I'm wondering if running the Wii in Emunand would save the sysnand from brick?

 

[PrincessLillie]

Ah shit, here we go again
I bet [DATA EXPUNGED] is getting a kick out of this lol.
In other news, I'm interviewing the creator of these brickers on Discord. He's even admitted that a driving factor in doing this was attention!

 

[james50a]

Let be honest it's probably Nintendo uploading this crap, or paying someone to. No one profits in random bricks except them by scaring others

 

[PrincessLillie]

Let be honest it's probably Nintendo uploading this crap, or paying someone to. No one profits in random bricks except them by scaring others

Why would Nintendo be uploading Wii brickers to a random internet gaming forum? Don't forget that they've stopped officially-supporting the console...

 

[piratesephiroth]

As I said, even though his name is redacted, it can be easily found as his page is on Github and you're giving him the attention he wants. He is getting fame from this, and you are only encouraging him to do more.

Viruses die from no hosts, and you've just given this person hundreds of new ones.

lolwut. This is a bit more serious threat than the DS brickers though, because those only worked on the first models (DS Lite requires you to short a connection in order to enable writing)
Once he gets his brickers floating around, they'll always be a threat because the Wiis can't be patched and there's no "anti-virus" for it.

Keeping quiet about it won't help anyone at all. The first post should explain exactly whats happening, what are the dangers and maybe ridicule the guy a little.

 

[Deleted User]

Uhm... Some people use homebrew that's *not* related to piracy, y'know.

I know what you're saying but really people need to setup emunand for anything they use that is unknown for the Switch and anything Nintendo related. Didn't think it would go this far where even on the piracy side , people ask about a popular game is safe to install and making pointless threads of one single game's md5 to avoid a brick. Now I'm definitely gonna see more questions about "random homebrew app safe to use?". At least I know the situation now thanks to you. We should all always be careful what we download and install

 

[dhtdht020]

lolwut. This is a bit more serious threat than the DS brickers though, because those only worked on the first models (DS Lite requires you to short a connection in order to enable writing)
Once he gets his brickers floating around, they'll always be a threat because the Wiis can't be patched and there's no "anti-virus" for it.

Keeping quiet about it won't help anyone at all. The first post should explain exactly whats happening, what are the dangers and maybe ridicule the guy a little.

Technically there is an "anti-virus" for it,
Anyone with a wii early enough to be capable of bootmii instaled on boot2 is pretty much immune to this.

 

[Foxi4]

I know what you're saying but really people need to setup emunand for anything they use that is unknown for the Switch and anything Nintendo related. Didn't think it would go this far where even on the piracy side , people ask about a popular game is safe to install and making pointless threads of one single game's md5 to avoid a brick. Now I'm definitely gonna see more questions about "random homebrew app safe to use?". At least I know the situation now thanks to you. We should all always be careful what we download and install

Oh, everyone should run EmuNAND or any other redirected firmware method on their devices, I was replying to the latter part of the post. There is so much more to homebrew than just installing backups.

 

[pLaYeR^^]

How to check if downloaded programs are legit except than downloading from trusted sources?