Enthusiasts have Turned the Nintendo Switch into a Functional Linux Tablet (theverge.com)

An anonymous reader shares a report: A couple of weeks ago, the fail0verflow hacking collective showed a still image on Twitter of a Nintendo Switch booting Linux. They're one of a small handful of hacker teams who are teasing exploits of the Nvidia Tegra hardware inside the Switch. But now fail0verflow has video of a full-on Linux distro running on the hacked Switch, complete with touchscreen support, a fully operational web browser, and even a GPU-powered demo application. On Twitter, fail0verflow claims the bug they're exploiting to sidestep the Switch's security can't be patched on currently released hardware, and doesn't require a modchip. But as for now there aren't any details on how to do this yourself at home.

Comments

Re:Ho-hum.

[mark-t]

Could *YOU* have done it?

The new Wii

[Juju]

This is going to be the new Wii in terms of homebrew and cracked games.
Remember the Homebrew channel? The way you could plug a hard disk and have the graphical interface to play all your "backup" games?

I am sure Nintendo are currently very worried about this and will try to get the hardware patched ASAP.

Re:The new Wii

[Anubis IV]

According to earlier reports, they can’t patch it. The problem is in the SoC itself, meaning they’d need to a new hardware revision in order to issue a “patch”. Any existing Switches are, and will forever be, exploitable by this tactic.

Re:The new Wii

[Khyber]

"after some amount of time push a 'bricking' update out to the older vulnerable Switch versions to disable them"

That would be quite illegal and definitely actionable in court. Intentional destruction of property.

Re:The new Wii

[Scoth]

Laws are pretty picky about destroying property. That would be a bad thing.

The main options would be:
1. Release a "New Switch" that all future games require. This would shut out a huge number of legitimate existing purchasers who have no interest in the hacking though, and Nintendo probably wouldn't want to institute a voluntary recall program. That'd be a mess.
2. Release firmwares and games that don't necessarily prevent this, but detect/undo/refuse to run on modified systems. This would be a cat and mouse game, much as it was on the Wii with various attempts to remove Homebrew channel.
3. Do little to nothing, knowing that the number of people who actually do this are going to be small.

It'll mostly depend on the difficulty and danger of doing it. The 3DS mods are pretty tricky for a lot of the average users, and while it's easier and safer now for most of the system's life it took very specific firmware versions and a lot of tricky steps to do to enable piracy. Wii was fairly easy on the whole bit still took a few steps. On the other hand, Dreamcast piracy just took a cheap burned disc and was a much bigger problem. We'll just have to see how it goes.

Re:The new Wii

[tlhIngan]

1. Release a "New Switch" that all future games require. This would shut out a huge number of legitimate existing purchasers who have no interest in the hacking though, and Nintendo probably wouldn't want to institute a voluntary recall program. That'd be a mess.

No, you go and fix the SoC, and update the switch to use it for now. You leave the original 10M or whatever they sold alone - 90% of the users will be blissfully unaware, and the 5% you just leave it as the cost of doing business.

It's too early for a "new switch", so that option is out. Maybe in 2020 Nintendo might release a New Switch.

Nintendo is about to offer an online gaming thing, and if you do it right, you can actually detect modified systems. After all, the Xbox360 was modded to support pirated games, but you can never put that console online because Xbox Live would detect the modified system and ban you. This got to be a big problem because it meant a lot of used systems were unable to go online. So it's possible to have a compromised system that's still able to be secure.

Of course, if Nintendo were better, they'd realize they are doing what Microsoft did on the original Xbox - by not cooperating with the Linux folks, the inadvertently caused a team effect - the Xbox Linux folks, the Homebrew folks, and the piracy folks all gathered together to figure out ways to break into the Xbox. Microsoft realized this, and realized the Homebrew folks are probably the most technically oriented of the lot (if they can code against something they have no documentation for, they will have the skills to break your security systems), which is why they did the whole XNA thing and now UWP. If you want to homebrew for Xbox, Microsoft is more than willing to let you do it and provide the official channels. And if it's good, Microsoft will let you officially sell it.

Sony learned this the hard way when they closed off their PS3 Linux support - suddenly homebrewers were left out and quickly got to work breaking the new PS3 security systems. And now they're close to breaking the PS4 - they've already got an old firmware broken (and heavily exploited for piracy).

If Nintendo was smart, they'd embrace the hacking, thank them for their work, and have a semi-official way to do that. If they were really good, they'd toss a way for people to write Switch games too. Doing this will basically sap all the knowledgeable people into doing their thing, leaving the piracy folks starved for talent.

No point

[SmaryJerry]

Switch hardware is extremely overpriced. You could get or make similar tablet for under $100 easily. The only purpose of this would be to play the games also but it canâ(TM)t do that.

true hacking

[ra66itman]

this is what true hacking is, taking something and getting it to do something better or that it was not designed to do,Most likely, they will claim it is exploiting and do a hardware mod to stop this,I remember when someone found a way to put Linux on a Playstation. I know of at least one person/company who bought a dozen Play stations and used them as a array processor.

OH YES

[GameboyRMH]

I might actually buy a Nintendo Switch now. If they get it to run "homebrew" games, that'll just be icing on the cake. I do want to try that new Zelda game.

I've been looking for a good Linux tablet

[HalAtWork]

This is nice, I have a Switch and would like to experiment with this, it has a powerful chipset.

I am looking for a good Linux tablet that is reasonably repairable and has a battery that isn't too hard to replace, but unfortunately a lot of common ARM Android tablets can't install Linux natively and seem to require a VM with VNC. There are also not many reviews of x86 tablets from a Linux perspective.

Maybe this will be with a look, it seems to perform well and support hardware features.