Wii Internet Connection Reverse Engineered

AlexTheBeast writes "By packet sniffing his Wi-Fi connection, this hacker has already begun to dig into the internet interactions of the new Nintendo Wii. Basically, by using Firefox and after setting the user agent correctly, anybody can easily browse many WiiShop pages including the WiiShop main page and startup manual. More advanced connections including binary and virtual console downloads are currently in the works. Come join the project."

Comments

Already Locked Down

[A Brand of Fire]

Apparently Nintendo has caught wind of this and has already set up redirects to the Wii root website from these links.

Re:Already Locked Down

[l_bratch]

This only happens if your user agent is set incorrectly.

If you RTFA, you will see what user agent to set your browser to.

Correction

[A Brand of Fire]

It seems that it redirects with links referred from other websites. After putting in the URL manually, I was able to view the pages. Pretty cool stuff.

DNS redirection

[AsnFkr]

Using DNS redirection you can get the Wii to any website you wish. Video

Re:Roms! \o/

[HappySqurriel]

I'm not positive I know what you're asking, but I think I'll give it a try ...

I could be wrong but I think the difference between what I'm describing and Fair Play is that Fair Play takes an unsigned data format and signs it to be specific to your particular account/machine and there is nothing that prevents you from using an unsigned version of that data with your account/machine; now, Nintendo could design a system such that it will only play games that were both signed by Nintendo (to make them an official rom) and signed for your specific machine. In Nintendo's case, stripping the per-account signing would give you an officially signed Nintendo rom but that would not be playable on an unmodified machine unless you had access to the account based signing key (by modifying the system you'd be attempting to remove the requirement that the game had to be signed per machine, or for homebrew that it was even signed at all).

Re:Squid proxy = Homebrew injection

[geekboy_x]

You dont need that - the Wii Opera browser can hit normal web pages just fine, so flash-based homebrews can just be served off regular ol' pages, like this:

http://wiicade.com/Home.aspx

Have fun!

Re:It's actually a very good name.

[tttonyyy]

That's true. When Nintendo announced the name, many people were disappointed, upset, and even angry. There was even a petition to Nintendo of America to change the name.

Certainly everyone talked about it.

And now we make affectionate jokes about the name, and it's quite accepted.

Methinks Nintendo made a very smart (or lucky) choice.

How to setup for this (simple way)

[zepo1a]

This is for FF 1.5 (yeah lame..haven't updated yet, I assume will work for 2.0)
type
about:config
in FF Address bar
right click in window. New->String
use
general.useragent.override
for preferemce name, click ok
use
Opera/9.00 (Nintendo Wii; U; ; 1038-58; Wii Shop Channel/1.0; en)
as string value. click OK. you should now be able to hit the site without a redirect to wii.com

Mirrors

[Anonymous Coward]

Mirrordot Links:

This Hacker How to view them

The wii uses a browser to communicate. By emulating this browser with firefox, you can surf the wii shop.
1. Open Firefox
2. Install the User Agent Switcher
The previous tech-recipes on the use of this tool is also killer.
3. Click Tools
4. Click User Agent Switcher
5. Click Options -> Options
6. Click User Agents
7. Click Add
8. Description: wii
9. User Agent: Opera/9.00 (Nintendo Wii; U; ; 1038-58; Wii Shop Channel/1.0; en)
10. Click OK X 2
11. Click Tools again
12. Select User Agent Switcher
13. Select wii
14. Copy and paste one of these links into firefox and visit it:

Main Channel:
http://oss.shop.wii.com/oss/common/vc/W_01.jsp?lan guage=en®ion=USA=US

Surf the Manual!
http://209.67.106.203/en_US/html/manual/USA/startu p.html

My Nintendo Membership Link:
http://oss.shop.wii.com/oss/common/vc/S_02.jsp?lan guage=en®ion=USA=US&=init

Sonic The Hedgehog Page:
http://oss.shop.wii.com/oss/common/vc/B_05.jsp?tit leId=000100014D414845

HTH, Monkeyboi (AC, I'm no karma whore...)

Re:It's actually a very good name.

[Anonymous Coward]

Here in Finland there used to be a brand of chocolate milk called Jukiuilla. That sounds very, very close to a word which translates best to English as "bloody assrape".

Huh? I'm not that young but I've never heard of such product. It doesn't get a single google hit either, not even suggestions for possible typos. Also, while I know more filthy slang terms for shady activites than would be really healthy, I can't figure out how that word could mean anything at all, let alone violent sodomy in Finnish. Did this story take place in some parallel universe or are there more Finlands than I'm aware of?

The point is valid, of course. There are many products which have become legendary for their more or less intentionally funny naming or advertising. Still, this particular example leaves me completely puzzled. Got any references?

Re:It's actually a very good name.

[smoker2]

Wii was a very good name to choose, just because of how much it sounds like a pet name for the penis.

In the UK, wee is the "pet" name for piss.

Great choice, they could have called it "shite".

Re:It's actually a very good name.

[Anonymous Coward]

Here in Finland there used to be a brand of chocolate milk called Jukiuilla. That sounds very, very close to a word which translates best to English as "bloody assrape".

Sorry to be serious but no, we didn't have that brand of chocolate milk in Finland and no, it doesn't mean "bloody assrape" nor does it mean anything else in Finnish. This whole post is a nice story but totally false.

Re:Roms! \o/

[Xenographic]

If they did any such thing to prevent people from downloading the ROMs, quite frankly, it would be a complete and utter waste of time.

As anyone should know by now, you can download ROMs and emulators for nearly any system you want online. It's not even hard. The Pirate Bay even has nice, huge, torrents with practically every ROM ever (including tons of bad dumps I have no idea why anyone would ever want).

So really, they shouldn't even bother. It would be a total waste of their time and money. Heck, if they're getting it from the store, at least people are paying for the ROM. So they can laugh about "hacking" the Wii store all they want, but if they're paying Nintendo instead of downloading it for free from any of the hundreds of ROM sites, well, they'd be shooting themselves in the foot to discourage that, I'd think.

Not that they wouldn't do such a thing, but...

Re:VC Question

[onlysolution]

You can input your credit card info to the Wii Shop, or input the code from the back of the points card to get wii points. 1 Wii point = 1 cent, which means Mario 64 is $10, SNES/Genesis/Turbo Gfx games are $6-8 and NES games are $5(!?)

Re:It's actually a very good name.

[Anonymous Coward]

There isn't. It would be something like "verinen perseraiskaus" which is pretty far from a specific word. And I don't think I've ever even heard those words used in that order. It sounds a lot better in English...