Wii Update 3.3 Defeats Twilight Hack, Freeloader

Richter X writes "The newest update to the Nintendo Wii's Menu, version 3.3, contains code specifically designed to find and kill the popular Twilight Hack used by homebrewers to play unauthorized code on the Wii. The update also prevents the Freeloader software used to play imported games on the Wii. However, it does not seem to affect the Homebrew Channel in Wiis that already have it installed. The updated code is currently being researched in order to find what code has been changed. So far it has been confirmed that Nintendo included specific instructions to target the Twilight Hack. Work is also being done to update the Twilight Hack in order to bypass this new code."

Re:Countdown

[Chyeld]

They've already found the bugs in the new code (which actually specificly looks for the TP hack save, rather than doing something nifty like verfiying saves in general) which will allow them to defeat it. The details aren't public but have been announced in general steps to many of the homebrew sites.

If I weren't at work behind a filter that thinks homebrew is 'illegal software', I'd post a link to an article or two.

But you should be able to check www.wiibrew.org... if I remember the URL. Sorry, I have bookmarkitis.

Re:Countdown

[Joe Snipe]

hackmii.com/2008/06/june-16-wii-update/

I'm guessing 48 hours?

Re:Countdown

[marcansoft]

It took less than 12 hours for a fully working workaround. We haven't released it yet because the code needs a bit of cleanup and half of the team wasn't around when this whole thing happened so we need to make sure we're all on the same page.

Details in hackmii.com. Short version: the detection code is buggy and can be tricked by exploiting two small bugs. No need to find a new hack, we can just "hack the antihack" and then use the same old hack.

We're cleaning up code and committing everything to our internal source repos as I write this.

Not sure if this has already been posted, but...

[Norwell Bob]

http://www.hackaday.com/2008/06/19/wii-menu-3-3-already-circumvented/ [hackaday.com] [hackaday.com]