Hacking Question What NAND modifications are made when using homebrew or CFW?

[bananapi761]

I've heard the best way to avoid a Switch ban is to backup your NAND prior to using homebrew or CFW, then restoring the backup when going online. My question is, does anyone know what is written to the NAND to make this step necessary? In my situation, I've made sure to enable flight mode and to remove my SD when launching CFW (I have one SD for NSP/XCI games and another for purchased eshop games). I am using Atmosphere so errors aren't being reported as well as having Wifi auto-connect disabled as an extra precaution, and so far I haven't forgotten to do these steps, and I still haven't been banned. I haven't installed any NSP or XCI to my internal storage, so should this be unnecessary in my situation?

 

[Draxzelex]

Since the NAND is primarily backed up using Hekate which is loaded in RCM WHICH is loaded before the NAND, theoretically nothing is written to the NAND hence why this method is the safest way to play a hacked console online.

 

[bananapi761]

Since the NAND is primarily backed up using Hekate which is loaded in RCM WHICH is loaded before the NAND, theoretically nothing is written to the NAND hence why this method is the safest way to play a hacked console online.

I have made a NAND backup using Hekate before using homebrew or CFW, but will I need to restore it every time I go online in OFW? The reason I ask is because to my knowledge I haven't made any modification to my NAND while in CFW, unless Atmosphere is doing something that Nintendo can pick up on when going online later?

 

[Draxzelex]

I have made a NAND backup using Hekate before using homebrew or CFW, but will I need to restore it every time I go online in OFW? The reason I ask is because to my knowledge I haven't made any modification to my NAND while in CFW, unless Atmosphere is doing something that Nintendo can pick up on when going online later?

In order to be as safe as possible, you will need to restore a clean NAND hack-free backup prior to going online. You will also need to make a new one every time you get off of online because you cannot restore the same NAND twice.

Atmosphere does several modifications to the NAND that some of which we know, but not necessarily all of them.