… guess there isn't any, sometimes. (Note this isn't the first time this has happened around Nintendo consoles.)
ReSwitched, the main brunt of the Switch hacking scene, has had a major falling out with one of its key members. This member was responsible for the discovery of and reporting of the now well known hardware exploit of the Switch, and that has recently been patched out of new hardware.
Turns out, apparently, there was another very tightly guarded secret boot flaw courtesy of nVidia and their wonderfully talented security department in the boot. This was not discovered by said member just discussed but, instead, stolen and submitted for profit to a White Hat bug bounty for up to 200,000$.
This is obviously theft of the work of someone else, and has resulted in this member's termination from ReSwitched:
Suffice it to say, this is a rather sad thing to see happen in a community regardless on what you may feel about hacking. But the Switch scene has been a pit of toxicity at its periphery for some time (not helped by its fast progress), and this is probably the most toxic event yet (followed closely by TX and stolen code, but they were never respected to begin with).
This isn't, however, the first time code has been stolen from the community. The piracy malware dongle TX OS has been found to use almost all stolen code from the community with no acknowledgments sold for a profit, in fact the only part of its code not stolen is the kernel sigcheck patching. Everything is copy and pasted wholesale from the in-development work from the Switchbrew/ReSwitched devs and their code on github.
This raises some new questions as well. I just made a thread about how the well known exploit in the Tegra had been patched out and that units were starting to make the rounds at retail (https://www.resetera.com/threads/bootrom-patched-switches-appear-at-retail.54531/) in Japan and Asia yesterday but even in NA as of today. This news appears to arrive right on the heels of the arrival of new units.
Did nVidia have a second hardware flaw in the Tegra? Honestly, given just how incompetent they've been proven to be by Switch hackers, I wouldn't be the least bit surprised. From GPU driver flaws to the boot, almost every single flaw in the Switch that has been exploited has been due to nVidia. So yet another hardware flaw wouldn't even surprise me at this point. Its just a meme now.
More importantly, did that flaw also get quietly fixed without warning? Maybe... I see smoke, and there's a right fire going on in ReSwitched. It all but guarantees that the secret-not-so-secret Mariko Switch will be patched if there was yet another flaw, but so too will all Switches in time see yet another iPatch if this did not fix the problem, and we now know they respond fairly quickly.
(Of note, its possible that whatever was stolen had nothing to do with the Switch but I am doubtful. It doesn't show up in nVidia's logs yet nor in HackerOne for Nintendo (nor does Nintendo pay out 200k$), though some curious names have switched teams: https://hackerone.com/nintendo/thanks/2018. These weren't there a few weeks ago, so expect a major patch soon, by the way!)
ReSwitched, the main brunt of the Switch hacking scene, has had a major falling out with one of its key members. This member was responsible for the discovery of and reporting of the now well known hardware exploit of the Switch, and that has recently been patched out of new hardware.
Turns out, apparently, there was another very tightly guarded secret boot flaw courtesy of nVidia and their wonderfully talented security department in the boot. This was not discovered by said member just discussed but, instead, stolen and submitted for profit to a White Hat bug bounty for up to 200,000$.
This is obviously theft of the work of someone else, and has resulted in this member's termination from ReSwitched:
Suffice it to say, this is a rather sad thing to see happen in a community regardless on what you may feel about hacking. But the Switch scene has been a pit of toxicity at its periphery for some time (not helped by its fast progress), and this is probably the most toxic event yet (followed closely by TX and stolen code, but they were never respected to begin with).
This isn't, however, the first time code has been stolen from the community. The piracy malware dongle TX OS has been found to use almost all stolen code from the community with no acknowledgments sold for a profit, in fact the only part of its code not stolen is the kernel sigcheck patching. Everything is copy and pasted wholesale from the in-development work from the Switchbrew/ReSwitched devs and their code on github.
This raises some new questions as well. I just made a thread about how the well known exploit in the Tegra had been patched out and that units were starting to make the rounds at retail (https://www.resetera.com/threads/bootrom-patched-switches-appear-at-retail.54531/) in Japan and Asia yesterday but even in NA as of today. This news appears to arrive right on the heels of the arrival of new units.
Did nVidia have a second hardware flaw in the Tegra? Honestly, given just how incompetent they've been proven to be by Switch hackers, I wouldn't be the least bit surprised. From GPU driver flaws to the boot, almost every single flaw in the Switch that has been exploited has been due to nVidia. So yet another hardware flaw wouldn't even surprise me at this point. Its just a meme now.
More importantly, did that flaw also get quietly fixed without warning? Maybe... I see smoke, and there's a right fire going on in ReSwitched. It all but guarantees that the secret-not-so-secret Mariko Switch will be patched if there was yet another flaw, but so too will all Switches in time see yet another iPatch if this did not fix the problem, and we now know they respond fairly quickly.
(Of note, its possible that whatever was stolen had nothing to do with the Switch but I am doubtful. It doesn't show up in nVidia's logs yet nor in HackerOne for Nintendo (nor does Nintendo pay out 200k$), though some curious names have switched teams: https://hackerone.com/nintendo/thanks/2018. These weren't there a few weeks ago, so expect a major patch soon, by the way!)
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