Hacking Wii u and Wii U game pad hack talk to be presented soon at CCC/30c3

[Ray Lewis]

If they're such great people as everyone's saying, and not in it "for the publicity" and shit, then why the hell did they tease everyone?

*Nyaa nyaa nyaa nyaa nyaa nyaa, we think we're better than you and have actually not helped at aaaaalllll*

Edit: It's more like they have two options with their findings and exploits. "Go Public and prove it" or "Don't go public and be teh l33t quiet hax0r"

They didn't want either. They want their cake and to eat it too. That shit won't fly with me.

I hope you are joking. I came to understand Marcan's public views. Like it or not, it is his work, and his group, and what does "won't fly with me" mean? Lol.

 

[Kupie]

I hope you are joking. I came to understand Marcan's public views. Like it or not, it is his work, and his group, and what does "won't fly with me" mean? Lol.

I'm not going to give all this glory to them when they've done nothing.

 

[Ray Lewis]

I'm not going to give all this glory to them when they've done nothing.

Lol, well tell the story about how you secretly hacked it.

 

[OncleJulien]

I'm not going to give all this glory to them when they've done nothing.

youve got them right where they want you.

 

[Schizoanalysis]

he kicked and he pouted until someone important came out.

and while i give him some credit for realizing that any attention, even negative attention is still attention, i have little to no faith in him ever being introspective and self-aware enough to realize that none of his enthusiasm, vitriol or even his apathy impacts or influences the hacking the wiiu even one bit.

He thinks that persistently whining, over and over again, will get him what he wants. He did exactly the same thing regarding Gateway and firmware 5.x/6.x compatibility.

Obviously tactics like this worked on his mother/father, and got him what he wanted, but he doesn't seem to realise that they will not work on others. As if anyone else actually cares.

 

[the_randomizer]

Can't wait to see what stuff they will announce

 

[redact]

Next, we will cover two different approaches that we used to attack the Wii U system.

that will be interesting to watch, i assume the two ways you're refering to are how you got tri-core vwii and how you got wiiu mode access. although if you mean there were two completely separate ways you could have gained access to wii u mode that would be even more interesting to watch

Spoiler

protip: set Ray Lewis and the_randomizer to ignore for maximum 3ds/wii section enjoyment

 

[2ndApex]

-snip-

 

[Kupie]

Guys, guys...

I hacked the WiiU

Totally not kidding, I'm THE BEST THAT EVER WAS!.

So first you interrupt the vWii, so you don't shut down all three cores before the Wii U does. TADA, TOTALLY WE ARE AWESOME, BITCH! WE'RE TOTALLY BETTER THAN YOU, KNOWING HOW TO SEND ASM SIGNALS QUICKER TO A CPU THAN NINTENDO'S SUPER TOP-LEVEL PROGRAMMING!

FAIL0VERFLOW IN THE HOUSE, WE ARE BETTER THAN YOU! We totally hacked it to shit, just believe us!

[/me]

So that's why I don't believe in these chumps, because that's totally what they did.

 

[JohnnyBlaze1986]

Cool! Hopefully it can be used like an Nvidia shield (PC Streaming wise)

That's EXACTLY what I said to the guy on Twitter. Especially since I got some KILLER deals with the Humble Bundles on Steam.


EDIT: Just got my question answered on Twitter! My last name is whited out for obvious reasons.....

Even if he's not the one to do it, he's releasing the tools so that someone will make it happen!

As far as using the buttons in vWii mode, I just sent that question along. Hopefully this means we can! Think about it. If it's being usable with a PC, then removing the button restriction on the vWii should be a piece of cake!

 

[edwardbirkholz05]

No, that's not what they did. At all.

They posted four messages: one, two, three, four.

There is no derogatory language, boasting or self aggrandizing.
There isn't even an explanation. It's hard to say they're attention seeking when there isn't any context given.
The only information those posts contain are the hashes, which are enough proof if anyone else manages to reproduce their work.
The speculation, misinformation and butthurt came from "news" sites posting their own interpretations followed by the usual braindead drones who inexplicably feel the need to smear their own waste/opinions throughout the comment sections.

 

[delroth]

Marcan posted the details of f0f's 30c3 talk, let's do the same to avoid more meaningless and stupid speculation.

Abstract:

A year ago in November 2012, Nintendo released their latest home video game console: the WiiU. While most video game consoles in the past used controllers that are very basic, the WiiU took the opposite route with a very featureful gamepad: wireless with a fairly high range, touch screen, speakers, accelerometer, video camera, and even NFC are supported by the WiiU gamepad. However, as of today, this interesting piece of hardware can only be used in conjunction with a WiiU: wireless communications are encrypted and obfuscated, and there is no documentation about the protocols used for data exchange between the console and its controller. Around december 2012, I started working with two other hackers in order to reverse engineer, document and implement the WiiU gamepad communication protocols on a PC. This talk will present our findings and show the current state of our reverse engineering efforts.

Description:

When the WiiU was released, a few console hackers and I were talking about potential uses for the WiiU gamepad. However, before being able to use a WiiU gamepad as a remote controller for a robot or a quadricopter, the first step was to understand how it worked and how to communicate with it. This started our long journey of soldering wires on Flash chips, reading the h.264 specification and complaining about the lack of features in most Wi-Fi drivers and devices (on all platforms, Linux and ath9k devices being the least horrible).

While some “journalists” reported that the WiiU gamepad is using the Miracast™ technology, a Wi-Fi standard, it turned out that this was never the case. Instead, Nintendo decided to reinvent four different protocols (video streaming, audio streaming, input streaming as well as a light request-reply RPC protocol), and embed them in a slightly obfuscated version of WPA2, sent over the air using 5GHz Wi-Fi 802.11n. A small ARM CPU is embedded in the WiiU Gamepad (codenamed DRC) and runs a realtime operating system to handle network communication. In the WiiU, another ARM CPU (codenamed DRH) does the same thing.

In this presentation, we will go into the details of how we went from a 32MB binary blob to a proof of concept of WiiU gamepad “emulation” on a PC, including full documentation of the wireless communications obfuscation layer and partial documentation of the four data exchange protocols used on the gamepad.

 

[Oxybelis]

If I remember correctly with Wii they contacted Nintendo before releasing hack to give them chance to fix it. N did not listen.

Do you think they listen to them this time?
"Stability" update just came out...

 

[Ericthegreat]

If I remember correctly with Wii they contacted Nintendo before releasing hack to give them chance to fix it. N did not listen.

Do you think they listen to them this time?
"Stability" update just came out...

No, I dont. Lets all call nintendo and say "HEY I HAX YOUR CONSOLE WANNA FIX IT" and I bet they would give you a generic response like "piracy is bad".

 

[obcd]

We know the one approach Team F0f used to hack the wiiu.
It's the code change during the decryption of the 1-512 that allows the use of all 3 cores in vwii mode.
This method doesn't allow the use of some of the other wiiu goodies like the extra memory and the faster cpu core speed. (At least not at the moment)

For the other approach, we have to be patient as it's a complete mystery at the moment.

 

[Ray Lewis]

So December 27-30th is the talk schedule. Wish it were today, lol.

 

[marcan_troll]

The 3-core Espresso overwrite-the-code-before-it-runs trick thing is a passing footnote in Part 1 (the system architecture part). It's inherent in the system design, trivial, and not one of the "two approaches" (though vaguely related to the first).

OTOH, the first approach is pure hacker fun/perfectionism and makes no fundamental difference to what you can do with the system (but no self-respecting hacker would use that as an excuse to not pursue it). This is a talk by hackers, for hackers. The audience at 30c3 will (hopefully) find the exploits interesting. You may or may not, depending on whether you enjoy security research or you just want results. If we were planning on releasing end-user-usable results we wouldn't have waited until 30c3. As you know, we haven't seen the public interest or motivation to make it worth spending time on results, and that hasn't changed. The response to 30c3 may or may not change that.

 

[pwsincd]

man , no public interest or motivation , i guess youve booked a small seminar room rather than a audatorium then .

 

[delroth]

Breaking news: GBAtemp still full of stupid entitled people who think they have any influence on people who do the real hacking/RE work.

 

[Ray Lewis]

Breaking news: GBAtemp still full of stupid entitled people who think they have any influence on people who do the real hacking/RE work.

Except for Kupie, the rest seems to be curiosity and speculation. Not sure what your post refers to. I am glad you did some work with the gamepad, not sure what you want people to say other than, "Cool you did it." Nice to have the skills you and Marcan have. It is human nature to think and ask, "How does this help me?" It is not tangible (yet). I am genuinely curious why your reply must be made when in threads like this, 95% seem positive regarding your work and upcoming presentation (along with f0f).

People make mistakes, I definitely did before, but gave up flaming a long time ago (mostly). "I scored 45 points in a basketball game" of "I coached basketball on the college level" might seem "Cool" but it really does not relate to anyone's life. You have skills I don't, and I have some you don't, just how life is. Congrats, great post I saw also regarding the process and what you/others actually discovered about the gamepad. Unless I am mistaken, your tweet had it seem like you would be releasing SOMETHING. Looking forward to it and the talks by you (basically) and f0f.

EDIT; it is good to forgive others as you want to be forgiven. People learn, and can change. Maybe consider this and brush off negative comments. If it does not influence you and others, THEN WHY REPLY and give it any time at all;-) Good day to you:-)