Nintendo Offers Up To $20,000 To Hack the 3DS (silicon.co.uk)

Mickeycaskill writes: Nintendo will pay up to $20,000 for system and software vulnerabilities in the Nintendo 3DS family of handheld gaming consoles. The company is looking to prevent activities such as piracy, cheating and the circulation of inappropriate content to children. The stated goal is to "provide a secure environment for our customers so that they can enjoy our games and services. In order to achieve this goal, Nintendo is interested in receiving vulnerability information that researchers may discover regarding Nintendo's platforms." Silicon.co.uk reports: "Rewards will range from $100 to $20,000, with one given per 'qualifying piece of vulnerability information.' Hackers looking to claim a reward will have to provide Nintendo with either a proof-of-concept or a piece of functional exploit code in order to qualify."

Comments

Good luck with that, Nintendo.

[Anonymous Coward]

$20,000 is peanuts compared to what a good exploit can bring in. The Xkey360 is a good example of a hack that brought in buckets of cash for the folks that made the kit.

Don't help them until they support homebrew

[MobyDisk]

Security holes in these types of devices are what enable the homebrew developer community. Until Nintendo provides support for homebrew development on the 3DS, no ethical hacker should be providing vulnerabilities to Nintendo. Now, if Nintendo put that $20,000 toward providing homebrew options, then ethical hackers will want to help Nintendo since it would help secure their platform.

Although, with the rise of smart phones, there is a much smaller homebrew community on the 3DS than there was on previous generations of their hardware.

Re:Don't help them until they support homebrew

[tepples]

This July, Nintendo offered devkits to individuals for the first time. See https://developer.nintendo.com...

It will work, but not how you think

[k3vlar]

This tactic will likely work, even for the pitifully low amount of money Nintendo's offering, and here's why:

Real exploit developers will be less likely to release their kits. As soon as they do, nothing's stopping someone from decompiling or reverse-engineering their exploits, and then sending them in to Nintendo claiming ownership and collecting the pitiful reward.

For every true developer doing it for the challenge, there's two dozen desperate wannabes who will steal it to try and make a quick buck, and it's a lose-lose for everyone. This is why the Wii & Wii U modding and homebrew scene died, it's why the iOS jailbreaking scene died, and those are just recent examples.

.

Re:It will work, but not how you think

[Bing Tsher E]

People doing it for the challenge probably will continue to do it, then. I can sympathize with them. Many times defeating the copy protection on an 'entertainment' device or game is more fun for nerds than playing the actual game.

So it's not a lose-lose for the hacker having their fun finding and refining the exploits.