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takyon [soylentnews.org] writes:

Nintendo Switch Kernel exploit 34c3 presentation: "Nvidia Backdoored themselves" [wololo.net]

Yesterday, hackers Plutoo, Derrek, and Naehrwert were at the 34C3 hacking conference in Germany to give a presentation on their kernel hacks on the Nintendo Switch (video below). Hacker Yellows8 wasn't there but was also credited for some of the work that led to this presentation.

[...] They detail in particular the sm:hax exploit [wololo.net] (which consists in skipping an initialization step for a service, which results in the service manager thinking the service has pid 0, making it root giving it additional privileges*), as well as the hardware glitching process that was used to get the Kernel decryption keys. Naehrwert also presents how he bypassed ARM's Trustzone on the Switch, a stunt he insists "is not useful for homebrew, but fun".

One of the highlights of the presentation is how the hackers leveraged the fact that the Nintendo Switch uses an "off the shelf" Nivdia Tegra X1 [wololo.net]. A GPU that is well documented, and for which debugging hardware can also be officially be acquired at reasonable prices. The X1 documentation in particular gave the hackers detailed information on how to bypass some security of the SMMU (system Memory Management Unit). "Just search for 'bypass the SMMU' in the documentation", Plutoo says. He concludes: "Nvidia Backdoored themselves".

Nintendo Switch Homebrew Launcher Could Allow Custom Software Via NVIDIA Backdoor [hothardware.com]

The one caveat to this new homebrew experience is that it is only currently validated for Nintendo Switch 3.0.0 firmware. So, if you want to take part in the festivities, you will need to stay on that firmware and resist the urge to update to a newer build.

Also at HackRead [hackread.com], TechRadar [techradar.com].

Related: The Ghost in Nintendo's Switch - Game Unlocks on the Date of Satoru Iwata's Death [soylentnews.org]
Nintendo to More Than Double Production of Switch; Success Rooted in Wii U's Failure [soylentnews.org]
Nintendo Sells at Least 10 Million Switch Consoles in 2017, 64 GB Game Cards Delayed to 2019 [soylentnews.org]

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