Poll of the Day > to prevent someone from hacking the Switch, nintendo uses fuses.

(+) Yeah! (+)

every time the firmware is updated (not the software. the actual firmware) it trips and burns out a fuse.

if you were to downgrade the firmware, the software would check to see if it's fuse is active or burned, and if the fuse was burned, it bricks.


this opens a lot of questions, like how many times can the firmware be updated before there's no more fuses, and then what about new devices that ship with an updated firmware, would they have all their fuses active, or would they trip when the console is first turned on and the firmware is checked?
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lateral usage of withered technology
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This seems like a bad idea

the xbox 360 did something similar to this, btw, and so did the PS3 but to a far lesser extent
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Theoretically, all you'd need to do is replace a fuse or solder across the contacts to solve that problem indefinitely.


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they're inside the processor, so good luck.
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They can still spoof the firmware if they have full control over the system, soo

It's just going to cost them a couple Switches in experimenting. Or one if they solder the fuses.
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Nothing can stop a system from getting hacked, this can slow down the process though.

Eventually it will be fully cracked, but the longer it takes the better their profitability will be.
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both the ps3 and the 360 got hacked

then they got better very quickly.

and that's pretty much it.
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Sounds like a potential nightmare if they ever release a problematic patch. Can't just revert to the old one and every new quick fix attempt is going to cost a finite resource.
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there's likely 100s of them, far more than they will ever use, anyways
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Came in expecting this to be a joke about fuse boxes versus circuit breaker boxes. Disappointed this wasn't a joke topic.
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scigeek101 posted...

Nothing can stop a system from getting hacked, this can slow down the process though.

Eventually it will be fully cracked, but the longer it takes the better their profitability will be.

Note that often when a console is hacked, some hackers take steps to make sure their hacks can't be used for piracy.

Imo it's pretty dumb, but they don't want the guilt. 95% of their audience just wants free games.
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^.^

https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51uj4Uo-33L._SL500_.jpg
https://cdn.mscdirect.com/global/images/ProductImages/5401450-11.jpg
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cute_fan posted...

^.^

https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51uj4Uo-33L._SL500_.jpg
https://cdn.mscdirect.com/global/images/ProductImages/5401450-11.jpg

Yeah, so, no.

you would need to disassemble the processor and find the fuses among thousands of Itty bitty similar looking things
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Yellow posted...

scigeek101 posted...

Nothing can stop a system from getting hacked, this can slow down the process though.

Eventually it will be fully cracked, but the longer it takes the better their profitability will be.

Note that often when a console is hacked, some hackers take steps to make sure their hacks can't be used for piracy.

Imo it's pretty dumb, but they don't want the guilt. 95% of their audience just wants free games.

when they finally announced vita cfw, the deva said that they locked out the ability to play games through it and they weren't going to change their mind about it.

it took three hours before someone someone had figured out to disable that
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helly posted...

cute_fan posted...

^.^

https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51uj4Uo-33L._SL500_.jpg
https://cdn.mscdirect.com/global/images/ProductImages/5401450-11.jpg

Yeah, so, no.

you would need to disassemble the processor and find the fuses among thousands of Itty bitty similar looking things

I do that all the time
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@helly

Exactly, which is why it's really really dumb.

I remember in the 3ds's case they had it only running in usermode and there was no access to the second cpu. They couldn't set up executable code in ram either, so basically emus were impossible. At that point what's even the point? Homebrew games are cute, but they're not really a big thing.
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uh

the 3ds is hacked to hell and back dude
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helly posted...

uh

the 3ds is hacked to hell and back dude

Yeah that was back in 2014 or something.
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Yellow posted...

They couldn't set up executable code in ram either,

Dooooo you mean how literally computers work?
Because you just described nothing special.

shadowsword87 posted...

Yellow posted...

They couldn't set up executable code in ram either,

Dooooo you mean how literally computers work?
Because you just described nothing special.

Dynamic recompilation is when you are actively generating new code in a program for the program that is being ran.

They weren't able to mark sections of ram as executable during runtime and that made dynamic recompilation impossible. They didn't have the permissions needed.

I don't really know the specifics of why they were able to load code from the SD card but not directly create it and I'm not really going to pretend I do.
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