Twilight Hack Defeats Wii Menu Update 3.3 199
Croakyvoice writes "Only days after Nintendo shipped Wii Menu 3.3, which stopped the Twilight Hack from working, the team lead by Bushing brought out a new version of the Homebrew enabling hack for the Nintendo Wii using the Zelda Game and a hacked save game."
Fatal flaw (Score:2, Interesting)
"Only days after Nintendo shipped Wii Menu 3.3, which stopped the Twilight Hack from working, the team lead by Bushing brought out a new version of the Homebrew enabling hack for the Nintendo Wii using the Zelda Game and a hacked save game."
This tells us that the wii allows content executables to run at a root/system level of elevated privilege.
No matter what Nintento does, they have no way to remove this security hole in way that would break the massive distribution of popular older software like Zelda.
The least ineffective solution at Nintendo's disposal would be to only run external executables in an isolated virtual machine.
Even that would suffer the same flaw. If the virtual machine is sufficient to run a game like Zelda with middling level demanding 3d graphics, it can offer enough resources to run a user provided, OS alternative.
The only solution I can see would be for Nintendo to implement a hash checking method in addition to VM architecture. The most effective method being copying to local storage before running and then running a hash check independant of the game media.
I don't know much about wii hardware, but I'm guessing it doesn't have enough storage (or at least storage fast enough to be acceptable for consumer expectation) for this to work.
So, it doesn't matter what Nintendo does, the wii will forever be a hackable platform.
Re:open works better (Score:2, Interesting)
Fitting in with your sig the popular and good opensource games seem to come mostly in the former-commercial or clone-of-commercial flavours.
Re:What is the point? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Nintendo's intentions (Score:5, Interesting)
I wish scores went above 5 so I could've modded this up.
They said that homebrew save files will be deleted, publicly, prior to providing the update link; they basically said "We're going to eliminate anything that could cause system instability, so if you want to keep it, transfer it to an external device. We really don't want to brick your console." No reasons regarding piracy were given, although they probably express a healthy level of awareness and paranoia about the possibility of homebrew leading to piracy.
All in all, Nintendo generally seems intelligent about this sort of thing. They're trying to balance the happiness of the power-users and modders with their corporate interests and the possibility of piracy.
Re:open works better (Score:5, Interesting)
I was to the mechanic last week to get my engine checked out. The check engine light was on and I had no idea why. It didn't really tell them much either.
So they hooked it up to a "computer". (little handheld diagnostic gadget with small LCD display) Many of us that have taken our vehicles in for service have had to "hook it up to the computer" to see why the idiot light is on.
It told him there were one of three problems, the main one of which was going to require tearing the truck to pieces to get at a sensor, and since it only MIGHT affect my gas mileage, it wasn't worth it and I'm just going to live with the light, it's an old truck.
But he said that the computer itself was 20 grand, and the modules that he had to plug into it to check my vehicle, were $500 apiece. (there were two, any vehicle takes a particular combination of the two, one to read the sensors and one to interpret the output) He also told me that this was the last time the company was going to make modules for it, that the next iteration he was going to have to upgrade the computer (another 20 grand) but was very thankful that the modules were going away and it was instead only going to cost $200-300 each for downloads to upgrade the two parts of the tool.
So in much the same respect, Ford holds a lockdown on my truck, that I can't diagnose it without someone paying an unreasonable amount to do so. I don't have to take it to the dealer, there are mechanics with The Computer too, but it's not like I can have one of my own. He gets $40 every time he hooks someone up to The Computer, to defray the cost of the computer and its modules. That's $40 I really shouldn't have to pay, it should tell me what's wrong, or be a reasonably easy output. (gimme a serial cable with serial out, or on something newer, let me ssh in) Or on some vehicles you get a flashing series of lights. Or how expensive would it be to simply have a 3 digit LED display to give me a number, and have a table in the back of the owner's manual to look up the number? But no they're very happy to charge someone a ridiculous amount for that privilege and so that cost is passed on to me.
I also know someone that reprograms ECUs for street racing ("ricer") cars. He has to disassemble the source code on the new ECUs to figure out what they're doing, to modify them to fit the customers' needs.
There are many examples of lock-down in vehicles.