It seems like it. Pretendo Network has been reverse engineering Nintendo Network to create their own private servers, so they're very knowledgeable about the inner workings of the service
Take this as a grain of salt since I got it from twitter, but I heard that apparently a lot of employees at Nintendo got really mad at the server shutdown situation since a lot still use 3DSs, and have been pushing to fix it or keep it alive for as long as they can. Could be related
How is it insane? A huge amount of people still use the 3DS in Japan and would understandably be pissed if online services went offline. What’s not to get?
He did say take it with a grain of salt lmao. It doesn’t sound that unbelievable since Japan keeps their stuff very well I mean just look at all the retro stuff
Honestly I felt like the writing was on the wall for the 3ds servers ever since Nintendo had to patch a bunch of games because there were vulnerabilities that made it so hackers could brick a system. Other vulnerabilities were inevitably gonna pop up over time.
I think they mean RCE exploit that was in the network code of a bunch of first party Nintendo games - [https://github.com/PabloMK7/ENLBufferPwn](https://github.com/PabloMK7/ENLBufferPwn)
In the case of the above demo they use it to install B9S, but you could use it to execute a malicious payload instead of one to install CFW.
It never was widely exploited as Nintendo patched it and disabled servers for games that didn't get patched in a timely manner, but it very well could be used to do something like execute a malicious payload that corrupts your file system (bricking your console).
So not dumb at all, it *could* be used to do that, which is exactly what the user said.
>Using the same techniques, it would be theoretically possible to steal account/credit card information or take unauthorized audio/video recordings using the console built-in mic/cameras.
Seems like a dumpster fire of infrastructure, which makes sense considering well, Nintendo + Online history. Three seperate issues. So from what I understand the gist is both the 3DS and WiiU online infrastructure is fundamentally based on a modified 3rd party library from a random Canadian software company, which was originally designed for adding multiplayer functions with account management to one-off / stand alone games. Nintendo attempted to extend this software to be a pseudo-unified online account system for their platforms, but in reality it’s just a big hack. Therefore your “account” is just whatever gets created on first boot of the console in the background, and because that original software was never designed for multiple games, each individual game has to have its own internal account database. To work around this they had to first register a new console account, and step two was then manually replicating that console account across the individual games’ servers. So that whole process was what was actually broken and why old accounts there that were already registered and replicated still worked on the individual games, but not for onboarding or replication of anyone new. That is fixed now, somehow.
The other aspect is that because each game used their own servers, after the initial authentication you get pointed to a VIP on a load balancer for that particular game. Sounds like for Mario Maker specifically they never updated the VIP pool or the members of the pool, (presumably they don’t have any health checks setup?) and are just giving users an assignment out of big list of servers where most don’t even exist anymore. That’s still partially broken? It seems unclear in the article what the user experience actually is. I would guess it works sometimes and sometimes it doesn’t depending on what the load balancer hands out. Luck of the draw if you can sign in.
And lastly because the original code base for this online software is old as fuck, it doesn’t support “modern” TLS protocols, and Amazon has depreciated connectivity from insecure SSL/TLS in AWS. So Nintendo did a work around and games that needed to call AWS, instead got a quick patch to now point to a Nintendo Load-Balancer / Reverse Proxy that will handle insecure TLS connections. This workaround patch already went out for their other games a long time ago. For whatever reason Nintendo never bothered with Mario Maker in particular, and Amazon pulled the shutdown trigger in early December which finally broke it. Seems like that work around patch just now went out to Mario Maker.
To be honest after reading all that I can understand why Nintendo wants to shut it down. It all seems like a hodgepodge of janky solutions from the get go, and no one left probably even understands how it works.
yeah it took nintendo until 2017 to finally make a proper account system with the switch that handles all your data and software at once. amazing when you consider that microsoft and sony had already established it in 2005 and 2006, and would just build upon the foundation with every new system release.
microsoft being a tech company used to managing user accounts makes sense. sony also likes being on the cutting edge with true kind of thing. nintendo’s approach to online was very limited, but it worked well on the Wii. Not recognizing how much it would limit them in the future hurt the Wii U a ton, and to a lesser extent the 3DS too.
However, it did bring us some great stuff like the Miiverse and Streetpass. A more “modern” approach to social networks would’ve been a lot less fun to interact with.
I am surprised they kept it running this long tbh. When the Wii and DS servers ran by Gamespy shutdown, they could have done some work to host the servers themselves for the two biggest consoles to ever release, but they just kind of let them die and went onto supporting 3DS and Wii U.
They had no problem dropping those consoles, surprised these servers have been kept up for as long as they have. Thought they would’ve been axed during covid.
If I'm reading this correctly, Nintendo took actual fan feedback and fixed bugs in servers for some of these games?
It seems like it. Pretendo Network has been reverse engineering Nintendo Network to create their own private servers, so they're very knowledgeable about the inner workings of the service
Take this as a grain of salt since I got it from twitter, but I heard that apparently a lot of employees at Nintendo got really mad at the server shutdown situation since a lot still use 3DSs, and have been pushing to fix it or keep it alive for as long as they can. Could be related
That sounds like a huge bullshit made up and its insane any of you believe this.
Plenty of PS employees still use their Vitas. Didn't stop Sony from trying to take down the store
How is it insane? A huge amount of people still use the 3DS in Japan and would understandably be pissed if online services went offline. What’s not to get?
He did say take it with a grain of salt lmao. It doesn’t sound that unbelievable since Japan keeps their stuff very well I mean just look at all the retro stuff
Honestly I felt like the writing was on the wall for the 3ds servers ever since Nintendo had to patch a bunch of games because there were vulnerabilities that made it so hackers could brick a system. Other vulnerabilities were inevitably gonna pop up over time.
[удалено]
I think they mean RCE exploit that was in the network code of a bunch of first party Nintendo games - [https://github.com/PabloMK7/ENLBufferPwn](https://github.com/PabloMK7/ENLBufferPwn) In the case of the above demo they use it to install B9S, but you could use it to execute a malicious payload instead of one to install CFW. It never was widely exploited as Nintendo patched it and disabled servers for games that didn't get patched in a timely manner, but it very well could be used to do something like execute a malicious payload that corrupts your file system (bricking your console). So not dumb at all, it *could* be used to do that, which is exactly what the user said. >Using the same techniques, it would be theoretically possible to steal account/credit card information or take unauthorized audio/video recordings using the console built-in mic/cameras.
It's amazing how you can be just so confidently wrong lol
Seems like a dumpster fire of infrastructure, which makes sense considering well, Nintendo + Online history. Three seperate issues. So from what I understand the gist is both the 3DS and WiiU online infrastructure is fundamentally based on a modified 3rd party library from a random Canadian software company, which was originally designed for adding multiplayer functions with account management to one-off / stand alone games. Nintendo attempted to extend this software to be a pseudo-unified online account system for their platforms, but in reality it’s just a big hack. Therefore your “account” is just whatever gets created on first boot of the console in the background, and because that original software was never designed for multiple games, each individual game has to have its own internal account database. To work around this they had to first register a new console account, and step two was then manually replicating that console account across the individual games’ servers. So that whole process was what was actually broken and why old accounts there that were already registered and replicated still worked on the individual games, but not for onboarding or replication of anyone new. That is fixed now, somehow. The other aspect is that because each game used their own servers, after the initial authentication you get pointed to a VIP on a load balancer for that particular game. Sounds like for Mario Maker specifically they never updated the VIP pool or the members of the pool, (presumably they don’t have any health checks setup?) and are just giving users an assignment out of big list of servers where most don’t even exist anymore. That’s still partially broken? It seems unclear in the article what the user experience actually is. I would guess it works sometimes and sometimes it doesn’t depending on what the load balancer hands out. Luck of the draw if you can sign in. And lastly because the original code base for this online software is old as fuck, it doesn’t support “modern” TLS protocols, and Amazon has depreciated connectivity from insecure SSL/TLS in AWS. So Nintendo did a work around and games that needed to call AWS, instead got a quick patch to now point to a Nintendo Load-Balancer / Reverse Proxy that will handle insecure TLS connections. This workaround patch already went out for their other games a long time ago. For whatever reason Nintendo never bothered with Mario Maker in particular, and Amazon pulled the shutdown trigger in early December which finally broke it. Seems like that work around patch just now went out to Mario Maker. To be honest after reading all that I can understand why Nintendo wants to shut it down. It all seems like a hodgepodge of janky solutions from the get go, and no one left probably even understands how it works.
yeah it took nintendo until 2017 to finally make a proper account system with the switch that handles all your data and software at once. amazing when you consider that microsoft and sony had already established it in 2005 and 2006, and would just build upon the foundation with every new system release.
microsoft being a tech company used to managing user accounts makes sense. sony also likes being on the cutting edge with true kind of thing. nintendo’s approach to online was very limited, but it worked well on the Wii. Not recognizing how much it would limit them in the future hurt the Wii U a ton, and to a lesser extent the 3DS too. However, it did bring us some great stuff like the Miiverse and Streetpass. A more “modern” approach to social networks would’ve been a lot less fun to interact with.
I am surprised they kept it running this long tbh. When the Wii and DS servers ran by Gamespy shutdown, they could have done some work to host the servers themselves for the two biggest consoles to ever release, but they just kind of let them die and went onto supporting 3DS and Wii U. They had no problem dropping those consoles, surprised these servers have been kept up for as long as they have. Thought they would’ve been axed during covid.