Hackers are now claiming to have gotten access to the Nintendo Switch kernel, a critical part of the operating system. If true, this paves the way for homebrew games and pirated games to run on the system.

That’s according to a vulnerability researcher who announced the news on Twitter.

Getting access to the operating system kernel is the first step in unlocking the whole system and making it possible to run custom software (such as homebrew apps or pirated games).

The homebrew community is still far from having full access to the system, but it looks like they’ve made the first step.

And this isn’t something that’s exclusive to the Switch: every console is target for hackers to unlock and exploit, and eventually, every console is unlocked.

Nintendo has been always been big on security of their systems, and especially when it comes to piracy prevention. The company has offered bounties to Switch hackers who find vulnerabilities in the system, but it’s unknown what results this has had so far.

As exploits are found, Nintendo can stay ahead of the hackers by releasing firmware updates to patch those exploits. We’ll have to wait and see how this plays out over the next months or even years.

Posted: Jul 10, 2017 9:09 pm
Related Forum: Gaming Discussion

Source: http://nintendotoday.com/nintendo-switch-kernel-unlocked-by-hackers/