Kiwi Farms

So... Someone managed to install Linux on a Nintendo Switch.


From ExtremeTech:

Hacker group Fail0verflow has announced a Switch hack that the organization claims can’t be patched or blocked by firmware updates on already-shipped Switches. They’ve published a screenshot of the device booting a Linux distribution, likely giving someone at Nintendo heartburn in the process.

It’s not clear when we’ll see the exploit in the wild. Fail0verflow says there’s no need for modchips, but the Switch in the image above is clearly wired up for something. Hackers have been hammering at the Switch for quite a while and have been making steady progress in breaking the platform, but this is the first time we’ve seen a cold boot program used to launch a third-party operating system. In theory, this opens the Switch up to homebrew applications and other types of projects.

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As mentioned in the article, this is the most important (and complicated) step to open the switch to homebrew projects. we are talking about emulators, 3th party software and game "backups".

This, pretty much, creates the Switch Scene. It's almost a certainty that Nintendo will start to produce hardware revisions from now on. Fail0verflow declared the exploit to be unpatchable by software methods due to it being nested on the Tegra X1 processor, a well known and documented chip witch has been hacked in the past. The only way to patch said exploit is to add hardware barriers to it (custom chip controllers) or create a Switch with a completely different hardware. This last option is not viable as the costs of it will skyrocket. Most likely Nintendo will end up modding the X1 but it will eventually get hacked again. The floodgates have been opened for good now.