It’s been revealed that the piracy-enabling firmware recently launched for Nintendo Switch contains ‘brick code’ that can render the device inoperable, designed to stop it from being copied – a somewhat ironic state of affairs. Security researcher Mike Heskin took to Twitter to reveal the findings of his analysis of Team Xecutor’s ‘SX OS’ custom firmware. It’s a software patch for the Switch’s operating system, released in tandem with a hardware dongle that opens the door to running unsigned code – ie homebrew – but also enables copied games to run.
So why wilfully introduce code into the firmware that can render the device useless? As Heskin points out, this is actually nothing new – a 3DS hack did exactly the same thing. Hardware-based hacks can be easily cloned (indeed, ‘open source’ piracy-free Switch hacks based on the same exploit are already available) and Team Xecutor’s proprietary work comes in the way it has adjusted Switch’s OS to allow copied software to run. Heskin says that he actually bricked his own console – deliberately – during his research, presumably to see what Team Xecutor’s countermeasures actually do.
The bricking code is designed to halt users – or more likely, Xecutor’s rivals – looking to reverse-engineer and copy the piracy-enabling portions of the firmware. In normal usage, it should sit in the background and not do anything, though Heskin reckons there’s a very small chance that users of the firmware could accidentally trigger the code. In this scenario, Switch’s 32GB of NAND memory is locked based on a dynamically generated password created by the brick code, making the console useless. Only by reflashing the NAND externally can the console be restored – hardly an easy task.
Source: Eurogamer Nintendo Switch piracy firmware uses 'brick code' to prevent itself from being pirated