Hacking Why does letterbomb only work on 4.3?

[Deleted member 398281]

I've always thought 4.1 - 4.3 were just homebrew killers, until I thought about this. Afaik there weren't any changes made to the message board in the 4.3 update, but apparently this is untrue.

So here's my question, out of pure curiosity:
What exactly did Nintendo patch in the message board that makes Letterbomb only usable on 4.3? Was it some kind of bug they tried to fix, but accidentally opened up more exploits by patching it? Or was the exploit there all the time, but it wasn't usable because of deeper lying barriers that got bugged in the update?

 

[Tenshi_Okami]

I've always thought 4.1 - 4.3 were just homebrew killers, until I thought about this. Afaik there weren't any changes made to the message board in the 4.3 update, but apparently this is untrue.

So here's my question, out of pure curiosity:
What exactly did Nintendo patch in the message board that makes Letterbomb only usable on 4.3? Was it some kind of bug they tried to fix, but accidentally opened up more exploits by patching it? Or was the exploit there all the time, but it wasn't usable because of deeper lying barriers that got bugged in the update?

Most probably because it was only exploited on 4.3.. maybe it could work on older versions if someone ports it. Buy why? You can just update to 4.3 and do letterbomb and that's it

 

[Mikemk]

Most probably because it was only exploited on 4.3.. maybe it could work on older versions if someone ports it. Buy why? You can just update to 4.3 and do letterbomb and that's it

Can't do the bootloader thing if you do

 

[Tenshi_Okami]

Can't do the bootloader thing if you do

What bootloader thing?

 

[Owenge]

Reasons

 

[Deleted member 398281]

How clear

 

[Owenge]

As clear a a brick wall my dude

 

[Deleted member 398281]

I'm not asking because I'm on a lower sysmenu version or something, it just came across my mind and it made me wonder why it only works on 4.3

Anyways, I guess it makes kind of sense that it's not compatible with every version. But in that case, Nintendo did make some bigger updates to 4.3 then I guess?

 

[Owenge]

Maybe it has to do with how the exploit works

 

[Deleted member 398281]

You've got a point there. If I only could take a look at the source code...

 

[OrGoN3]

You've got a point there. If I only could take a look at the source code...

nevermind i'm thinking bannerbomb. Letterbomb works by sending your Wii a malformed message that loads boot.elf from the SD card. Letterbomb didn't need to work on anything lower than 4.3 because we had bannerbomb for that. Letterbomb's source code is closed, but here are theories as to why it requires 4.3 and nothing lower:
-System Menu now uses IOS80 in the 4.3 update. perhaps that is where the exploit was found? Prior to this system menu was IOS70
-Added IOS58 - maybe this one?

The easiest explanation i can think of is that they found an exploit in IOS80.

 

[Owenge]

oh lol i have no clue about that

 

[Ryccardo]

Most likely just different offsets in the wiimenu itself, just like that large number of Vita plugins for 3.60 (or Priiloader patches) that "only" need new offsets figured out to be ported to another version

 

[The Real Jdbye]

nevermind i'm thinking bannerbomb. Letterbomb works by sending your Wii a malformed message that loads boot.elf from the SD card. Letterbomb didn't need to work on anything lower than 4.3 because we had bannerbomb for that. Letterbomb's source code is closed, but here are theories as to why it requires 4.3 and nothing lower:
-System Menu now uses IOS80 in the 4.3 update. perhaps that is where the exploit was found? Prior to this system menu was IOS70
-Added IOS58 - maybe this one?

The easiest explanation i can think of is that they found an exploit in IOS80.

I doubt it has anything to do with IOS, you'd need AHBPROT access to do anything to IOS and I don't think the system menu has that. Most likely it was just made for 4.3 and never backported to lower firmwares. Bannerbomb is preferrable on lower firmwares anyway, since it doesn't have to be built for each individual Wii by entering the MAC address. It's just easier so there's no reason anyone would want to use Letterbomb on lower firmwares, and what's the point in adding support for lower firmwares if no one's ever gonna make use of it?

Can't do the bootloader thing if you do

Are you referring to BootMii? Firmware updates don't affect BootMii compatibility, your boot1 version does, but that's tied to when the Wii was manufactured as boot1 isn't updatable.

 

[Mikemk]

Are you referring to BootMii? Firmware updates don't affect BootMii compatibility, your boot1 version does, but that's tied to when the Wii was manufactured as boot1 isn't updatable.

Oh

 

[DaMan4169]

Letterbomb is only usable on 4.3 because that is the way it was written. If you read between the lines in their own disclaimer you will see that they just quick released it before Pune released Wilbrand. He named it after Julius Wilbrand whose main contribution to science was the nitration of toluene

Pune didn't release Wilbrand as any type of GUI but a couple of others made graphical interfaces for it, Launcher and GUI. It is also used in Modmii for the 4.3 exploit.
The main reason the message board flaw isn't used for previous SM is just because their are other less restrictive methods, you need a MAC address to send a Wii message. You can use Wilbrand for prior System Menus because the message board flaw is there and Pune dumped and debugged 32 versions of System Menus to find the offsets.

 

[Bunicu]

I've always thought 4.1 - 4.3 were just homebrew killers, until I thought about this. Afaik there weren't any changes made to the message board in the 4.3 update, but apparently this is untrue.

So here's my question, out of pure curiosity:
What exactly did Nintendo patch in the message board that makes Letterbomb only usable on 4.3? Was it some kind of bug they tried to fix, but accidentally opened up more exploits by patching it? Or was the exploit there all the time, but it wasn't usable because of deeper lying barriers that got bugged in the update?

Because there are people that should ask this...