Hacking [PSA] Strong anti-piracy measures implemented by Nintendo for online.

FAST6191

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I haven't quite got the idea, so we are safe as long as we don't run pirated games online? , what I mean is, I have my console on 4.1, I wanted to install emunand on it and be able to play some of my legit games online again, should we be fine as long as we don't connect to the internet while using the backups?(simply activating airplane mode while undocked should do the trick I guess)
In the basic scenario then sure and that is a reasonable set of starting measures. If Nintendo is playing to win and has a bunch of people with real skills working for them then it gets harder. Should they have a way to read your emunand image or emunand places some data somewhere that conventional NAND can read (I don't know the extent the trustzone thing works and could possibly keep data between boots), if there are no hidden checks that can do things (as soon as someone makes a decent homebrew youtube player said aeroplane mode will vanish for a lot of people, nintendo then hides gtrkoljhfkhjfgjklhjkhglkhj.com in there somewhere, has a hack test report back to that...).
 

pofer

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has a hack test report back to that...

Yeah , that's why I was saying that keeping a fully updated synand where I can play online while having a emunand which never connects to the internet sounds more appealing now, I will wait 1 month after the release of Atmosphere/or a Backup loader and see how things go, then I will decide wether or not it is worth it to update my sysnand haha
 

Peabutt

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Yeah, see, you're not understanding me. I never said anything about two people going online. I'm talking about me, myself and I, with only MY Switch and MY legally owned Fortnite game. That being said:

What do you mean it'll "mismatch"? How would the server even know? The only thing it cares about is a VALID CERT. If I give a cert for Fornite, the game I LEGALLY own from the eShop, all the server sees is a VALID FORTNITE CERT. It knows NOTHING about the game underneath.

See where I'm coming from?

For one chill, even if it's just your own games and you are trying to disguise it for whatever reason the cert will mismatch. I know because you are sending a cert for one game and then connecting with another. It apparently does know what game you are running underneath. SciresM has said this himself.
 

DavGerm4

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I don't think Nintendo's learned squat! Plus, people would know better then to go online with a pirated game. Most people just want it for Single Player games.
 
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Deathscreton

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For one chill, even if it's just your own games and you are trying to disguise it for whatever reason the cert will mismatch. I know because you are sending a cert for one game and then connecting with another. It apparently does know what game you are running underneath. SciresM has said this himself.
1. Telling someone to chill whose already chill probably doesn't work.
2. Caps we're used to clarify, because all of this discussion was in my initial post. You either did not read it or ignored parts of it.
3.This harkens back to when I first responded to you, I already guessed what you are telling me. Had you said "yeah, that's right", this could have all been avoided.

Confusion at it's finest.
 

cybrian

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Okay, WHY can't you disguise them like that? He went into pretty big detail about how the process works. Nothing there says you can't disguise them.
Yeah, see, you're not understanding me. I never said anything about two people going online. I'm talking about me, myself and I, with only MY Switch and MY legally owned Fortnite game. That being said:

What do you mean it'll "mismatch"? How would the server even know? The only thing it cares about is a VALID CERT. If I give a cert for Fornite, the game I LEGALLY own from the eShop, all the server sees is a VALID FORTNITE CERT. It knows NOTHING about the game underneath.

See where I'm coming from?

You have a basic misunderstanding of how digital signatures work. When you purchase a game, in one way or another Nintendo combines both your unique identifiers and the common code for the game, uses some mathematics that have been proven for over 4 decades now, and distributes a certificate to you that contains "Deathscreton," "Fortnite," and most likely your console's serial number, and signs it with their eShop private key. When you play the game, your console essentially does the same thing, except it takes its own data about the game and yourself and then signs them with something unique to the console.

The thing is, you cannot simply use CFW or something to get in the middle of transmissions and send the Fortnite certificate when (for example) Zelda code is running, because Nintendo is still going to be checking the game data from your console, and they'll see a Fortnite certificate being sent along with Zelda code. Therefore, a mismatch — Nintendo would see that the running game is NOT what they expect. I don't know exactly how Nintendo does their verification, but it's safe to assume it's not easily flawed.

What Microsoft did with the Xbox 360 (which made piracy very difficult — not impossible, but very difficult) was measuring the actual distance between two different points on a disc, sending those to Microsoft, and then getting banned if they were not what Microsoft expected. The Switch doesn't use discs, but it could do something very similar by simply reading and sending Nintendo random bytes of code from the game on command. If the bytes are indeed randomly chosen there'd be no easy way to fake it out, and the only "hard" way I can imagine would still require you to keep Fortnite essentially "in memory" while playing Zelda, in my example.

The fact is, it's a game of cat & mouse, and unless they did something very wrong they can go as far as changing their verification methods with every update to throw things off. Chances are high that you'll have to buy a second Switch if you want to be able to both pirate games and play online, or at least have some sort of dual-boot setup that completely breaks internet access when booted into "modded" mode.
 

Peabutt

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1. Telling someone to chill whose already chill probably doesn't work.
2. Caps we're used to clarify, because all of this discussion was in my initial post. You either did not read it or ignored parts of it.
3.This harkens back to when I first responded to you, I already guessed what you are telling me. Had you said "yeah, that's right", this could have all been avoided.

Confusion at it's finest.

Well sorry if I misunderstood you in thinking that you were getting heated. A lot of people on GBAtemp have an attude issue.

I may have missed your initial post. I was just trying to answer what I saw. I'm sick right now.

I wanted to explain it to you further hence why I didn't just leave it at "yeah, that's right".

No hard feelings dude.
 
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Deathscreton

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Well sorry if I misunderstood you in thinking that you were getting heated. A lot of people on GBAtemp have an attude issue.

I may have missed your initial post. I was just trying to answer what I saw. I'm sick right now.

I wanted to explain it to you further hence why I didn't just leave it at "yeah, that's right".

No hard feelings dude.
I appreciate the extra step you were willing to take man. And yeah, I don't blame you for assuming I was upset. That's like, the forte for Temp users. Lmao. No hard feeling at all m8.

--------------------- MERGED ---------------------------

You have a basic misunderstanding of how digital signatures work. When you purchase a game, in one way or another Nintendo combines both your unique identifiers and the common code for the game, uses some mathematics that have been proven for over 4 decades now, and distributes a certificate to you that contains "Deathscreton," "Fortnite," and most likely your console's serial number, and signs it with their eShop private key. When you play the game, your console essentially does the same thing, except it takes its own data about the game and yourself and then signs them with something unique to the console.

The thing is, you cannot simply use CFW or something to get in the middle of transmissions and send the Fortnite certificate when (for example) Zelda code is running, because Nintendo is still going to be checking the game data from your console, and they'll see a Fortnite certificate being sent along with Zelda code. Therefore, a mismatch — Nintendo would see that the running game is NOT what they expect. I don't know exactly how Nintendo does their verification, but it's safe to assume it's not easily flawed.

What Microsoft did with the Xbox 360 (which made piracy very difficult — not impossible, but very difficult) was measuring the actual distance between two different points on a disc, sending those to Microsoft, and then getting banned if they were not what Microsoft expected. The Switch doesn't use discs, but it could do something very similar by simply reading and sending Nintendo random bytes of code from the game on command. If the bytes are indeed randomly chosen there'd be no easy way to fake it out, and the only "hard" way I can imagine would still require you to keep Fortnite essentially "in memory" while playing Zelda, in my example.

The fact is, it's a game of cat & mouse, and unless they did something very wrong they can go as far as changing their verification methods with every update to throw things off. Chances are high that you'll have to buy a second Switch if you want to be able to both pirate games and play online, or at least have some sort of dual-boot setup that completely breaks internet access when booted into "modded" mode.
I already mentioned this a few times in my initial post regarding WHY this wouldn't work. I was just looking for validation.
 
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FAST6191

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So basically pirate single player games and buy multiplayer
There might be local multiplayer as well.

I don't think Nintendo's learned squat! Plus, people would know better then to go online with a pirated game. Most people just want it for Single Player games.
I will grant this is a Nintendo affair so by virtue of that. Any other hacked device people will take it for all it is worth.

no one is going to play hacked consoles online baby.
Hold my beer.
 

mariogamer

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Just to say... this is specifically for hacked games, currently no firmware has code to detect cfw booting from hekate (rcm). And even there, hekate would esily be able to modify it.
Hope I'm not saying sh*t.
 

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