Wii Hacked for Better Homebrew Games

arbourp writes to mention that hackers Michael Steil and Felix Domke have demonstrated a way to hack the Wii that makes running homebrew code much easier. "The hack advances the possibility of running homebrew code with access to full system resources on the device, not just programs that Nintendo has sanctioned. Such games might be developed to run from a DVD drive, at least in theory. No such games are available as yet and Nintendo may respond by attempting to revoke compromised encryption keys. However history shows such countermeasures are likely to ultimately prove futile."

Smart Thinking

[MBCook]

I love the way they did, it shows good ingenuity. If you watch the video, they explain that they can get into GameCube compatibility mode (what is used for GC style home brew) but that the ATI chip acts as a gateway to the extended RAM and other new neat stuff (SD card slot, BlueTooth, etc.).

By physically tying address lines on the memory chips, they could circumvent the address lock and read areas of memory they shouldn't be able to. Through this, they dumped the RAM though the controller ports (using them as serial ports) and were able to pick through it and start decoding it to find things like the signature that let them break out.

Very neat. I love reading about this kind of stuff.

It will be very interesting to see what people do with this. I never really heard about any interesting XBox homebrew, just running Linux and XBMC type stuff. Ditto with the 'cube. But the Wii should prove interesting.

Re:hint hint

[hansamurai]

I'm sure you're aware but I would recommend buying an Xbox and install Xbox Media Center on it. It can do everything you want plus more (hard drive built in opens many opportunities), and they're really cheap right now. I run an Xbox at home and use it as my media center, great stuff.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XBMC [wikipedia.org]
http://www.xboxmediacenter.com/ [xboxmediacenter.com]

Botnet?

[Beardo the Bearded]

Ah, so you'll be able to run unsigned code on your Wii, which is connected to the internet 24 hours a day.

I can't wait for my Wii to get compromised. Awesome.

(Yes, I have a firewall, which - statistically speaking - is better than yours.)

Re:hint hint

[Joe Tie.]

I love the XBMC, but for H.264 I really wouldn't recommend it. It can play it in theory, but in practice most encodes are going to give pretty choppy, or totally lagged, playback.

Not Steil and Domke

[kju]

The hack was NOT presented by Steil and Domke. It was only presented at the end of their talk about xbox360 security at the CCC Congress. But the actual hack was presented by another person which name i don't know.

Re:Why a console? Why not your own breed?

[Abcd1234]

Wha? The Wii controller is a standard Bluetooth device. This page [wikihow.com] is just one of many that provides links to drivers, and details on how to install them, for using the Wiimote on either Windows or Linux.

Re:Pressed Disk

[Sangui]

They can't revoke the encryption key because it's a hardware thing. And no, you still need a Drive chip like a Wiikey or a D2Ckey before you can run this, unless they end up doing something like Swap Magic. The Dreamcast was pretty much shipped with Debug mode on, which is why you could just burn a cd and it would run. If you chip your Wii, which you'll need to do anyway, you can just use the one for the GC. It's got every game for the SNES, NES, and a few other old systems. Gotta use the GC controller though.

Re:hint hint

[pilot1]

And the majority of these homebrew games look like retail games, except they're free.

Actually, the Wii has been hacked to allow pirated games for about a year (it was presented at the previous CCC). This new hack will eventually allow people to run unsigned code, whereas the previous hack did not. Basically all the old hack did was provide a way to trick the Wii into thinking that burned DVDs were originals (current modchips sit between the DVD drive and the motherboard to intercept the "is this DVD real?" signal), but the content on the DVD still needed to be digitally signed by Nintendo.

Re:hint hint

[MBCook]

The Nano has a chip that accelerates (or, more probably, completely does) decoding of H.264. I don't know if the Wii has a chip to do that or not. If the Wii has the requisite chip, then as long as you stay within the chip's specs it would have no problem. If it doesn't or your video doesn't fit the specs (bitrate too high, for example) it's be on the CPU. My guess is that the CPU couldn't play full screen video (My PowerBook G4 1.67 had trouble playing back anything above 640x480 H.264, so I wouldn't think the Wii would be able to well). Now you could play lower resolution stuff and stretch it up to size with the graphics chip, but that wouldn't be the same thing.

The CPU in a Nano (or most any iPod) would fall flat on it's face trying to decode most any video format (except perhaps RLE) at it's native resolution.

Re:hint hint

[meatspray]

PS3 + TVersity (tversity.com) makes a fantastic media server.

Re:hint hint

[gEvil (beta)]

I've got a P4 2.6ghz/533fsb w/1gig of RAM and it chokes on 720p h.264 :(

Try digging up a copy of the CoreAVC codec (assuming you're running Windows). My 2GHz AthlonXP went from stuttering on 720p H.264 files to playing them perfectly smoothly (~80-85% proc) with CoreAVC.

Re:hint hint

[Shemmie]

Just a thought - no idea if it works... but I believe Orb can work with the Wii - could you not set up an Orb channel and play your music through that on the Wii?

Re:Not Steil and Domke

[bushing]

Steil and Domke (tmbinc) were nice enough to lend me a few minutes part of their Xbox360 presentation -- it served as a footnote to their discussion of the importance of memory protection.

I am the one talking for about five minutes in the YouTube video; although I wrote the software that actually modified the disc image to run unsigned code, I had a considerable amount of help over the past several months from tmbinc, Sii, Costis, and adhs. (tmbinc was the only other one who attended the conference, and he had his own presentation to give, so I got to get up there on stage and hope it actually worked!)

My first successful test ran about 30 minutes before the Xbox360 presentation started, so I didn't have much time for polish -- in fact, I had intended to show a version with greets, but I ran out of DVDs (after burning about 40) and had to run across the street to buy more. I ended up with a bad burn, and had to show an earlier version. Here's the screenshot I'd hoped people would see:

http://bushing.mm.st/wii-props.jpg [bushing.mm.st]