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Hackers Manage To Run Linux On a Nintendo Switch (techcrunch.com)
Romain Dillet reports via TechCrunch: Hacker group fail0verflow shared a photo of a Nintendo Switch running Debian, a distribution of Linux. The group claims that Nintendo can't fix the vulnerability with future firmware patches. According to fail0verflow, there's a flaw in the boot ROM in Nvidia's Tegra X1 system-on-a-chip. When your console starts, it reads and executes a piece of code stored in a read-only memory (hence the name ROM). This code contains instructions about the booting process. It means that the boot ROM is stored on the chip when Nvidia manufactures it and it can't be altered in any way after that. Even if Nintendo issues a software update, this software update won't affect the boot ROM. And as the console loads the boot ROM immediately after pressing the power button, there's no way to bypass it. The only way to fix it would be to manufacture new Nvidia Tegra X1 chips. So it's possible that Nintendo asks Nvidia to fix the issue so that new consoles don't have this vulnerability.
I suspect this ROM will be deeply embedded as part of the IC and will be impossible to reprogram; it isnâ(TM)t an eprom itâ(TM)s part of the Silicon.
"have this vulnerability" duh! a vulnerability?
;)
;)
Anything I can re-purpose by loading Linux on it is a plus in my world
Just my 2 cents
You have to physically put something on the device to make it work in this way. Being in control of a device you physically control isn't a vulnerability, it's a feature. Being in control of a device because something something network internet packet is a vulnerability.
This is not something to celebrate.
In the old days, when people said "Hackers got Linux running on a toaster", it meant that some clever people spent some time figuring out how to write hardware-specific Linux components for the toaster; it meant that Linux was improving, and growing.
Today, when people say it, they mean that some shady group of people used some shady techniques to exploit a bug in the toaster, and if you want to do the same on your toaster, then you'll probably have to download from some shady website a shady black-box binary blob that will run the exploit for you, without you ever really knowing just WTF is going on; it means that personal computing is further collapsing.
When old-timers talk, ROM means ROM. If we meant EEPROM, we would have said EEPROM.
Now get off the freakin' lawn!
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Hackers Manage to Run Linux on X is probably to most common beginning to a /. headline. As long as new devices are manufactured, nerds will make them run Linux. Imagine if all these countless man hours were spent making Linux work on PCs.
"From the depths of my skeptical and rationalist soul, I ask the Lord to protect me from California touchie-feeliedom."
Yes, people now use FLASH memory but place it into read-only mode. It is cheaper when one requires relatively large amounts of memory - as would be required by a ROM. There is probably a way to program the memory if you interrupt the boot sequence before the OS is loaded. One would require a hardware connection - such as JTAG. But from the perspective of the OS, it behaves just like a ROM.
Or perhaps there is a jumper to enable read/write access. I believe the Asus Chrome Box units protected their boot ROM this way. Only instead of a jumper you had to remove a screw.
But can it play DOOM?
"I believe in Karma. That means I can do bad things to people all day long and I assume they deserve it." : Dogbert
Unmodifiable early boot rom is very common. The Wii also had it. The Wii also had a bug in it that they fixed in a later hardware version. See http://wiibrew.org/wiki/BootMi...
The reason for it not being EEPROM is simple. They don't want anyone to modify it, as it's the start of the secure boot process. Allowing modifications on it would defeat the goal of this ROM.
What you point out is a part of a larger and more significant problem that gets into another /. thread—"What is missing in tech today?". What's missing is an appreciation that computer owners ought to be able to use their computers in the way they wish, fully owning and controlling their own computers. What's present is a focus on relatively minor issues like what gadgets people might find slightly more convenient to use (but apparently not to own).
Since people want this (the phrase "jailbreaking" is a testament to this; we wouldn't need this term if people enjoyed having their devices "jailed") the corporate proprietor-friendly media (and repeater sites) remind us when covering a story like this in multiple ways: from eschewing any reminder of the freedom to run, inspect, share, and modify published computer software like calling the installed OS "Linux" even when Debian calls their system GNU/Linux and the proper name is on the screenshot (just above the "fail0verflow" textual graphic), to using propagandistic language. There's also suggestion that the code is to be seen as "potential[ly] weak" instead of a means of allowing owners to control their own computers, and blaming fail0verflow should they choose to publish the means by which they installed Debian GNU/Linux on the Nintendo Switch for enabling "homebrew apps and (of course) software piracy". Ridiculous unchallenged and undefended anti-user views throughout which is par for the course in corporate media.
Digital Citizen
But just because something is a ROM does not by itself mean it canâ(TM)t be changed.
If it's actually a ROM, that's exactly what it means. And even if it's a flash ROM that there's no way to write without attaching external hardware, then from the standpoint of a user who doesn't want Nintendo to patch away the vulnerability, it might as well be a mask ROM.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
To be honest, I've enjoyed the vast, vast majority of my gaming life on systems that would be considered so laughably slow and obsolete now that people wouldn't take them off your hands for free.
It didn't once affect my enjoyment of the games, my enjoyment of replaying the games, or the nostalgia of going back to those same games 30 years later (whether on original hardware or via emulation).
If you think that anyone who plays games care about how many MHz or how many CUDA cores or how much texture RAM a certain device has, you're sadly in the minority. I gamed through the home computer rivalries, the 8-bit and 16-bit rivalries, PC vs console, online vs local LAN, etc. and not once did I ever care about having what was technically best, compared to what played the games I most enjoyed.
Nintendo are pretty much the only modern console company that get this. All their effort goes into the game design and new, fun twists, rather than what texture fill rate they can achieve.
Even in my "PC gamer" years on my twitch-shooters, I still didn't really care about those people who bought the top-line gear, overclocked everything, etc. just to get a few more FPS or a lower ping. It was the game that mattered.
Same as car-nuts. I'm sure your car does 0-60 in some unfathomably trivial fraction of a second faster than mine. But that's not why I bought the car. Don't put your use case onto me, or entire markets of billions of people who "just want to play a game with the kids".