Nintendo Piracy Protection Isn’t Working

[Demon_Skeith]

Earlier this week, Nintendo pushed live an updated piece of firmware for the DSi. It was aimed at stopping piracy. Less than a day later, however, flash cart manufacturers had already found a way around it.

It took flash cart (cartridges allowing the use of homebrew and/or pirated software) producer R4iDSN less than 24 hours to crack Nintendo's new copy protection, which begs the question: why bother?

It's the policy of Nintendo (and other platform holders) to combat piracy from a "top down" approach. To constantly release updated pieces of firmware and restrict the features of their consoles in an attempt to stop people from playing games without paying for them.

Yet this immediate circumvention is just the latest example showing that this approach does not work. What's worse is that great features of games machines, like OtherOS on the PS3 and the ability of Nintendo's handhelds to play games from other regions, have been taken away from loyal customers as part of this approach.

While some will argue that some protection against piracy is better than none, I don't think that's justifiable when you're forced to negatively impact loyal paying customers as a result.

source

a never ending battle.

 

[GracefulAssassin]

Nintendo protection sucks. lol

 

[Xtreme2damax]

Well of course it doesn't work, when will these ignorant company heads realize this? Where there is a will there is a way, and crackers/hackers will always find a way around any protection mechanism. Hell copyright protection doesn't even prevent zero day piracy, most games are cracked and released on the scene even before their retail releases.

 

[fardeenc95]

All the consoles got hacked sooner or later, and Nintendo expects it could fight back! I don't think they will stop piracy unless they take drastic measures, such as taking the case to a higher authority who could find the pirates.

 

[hissae2]

Piracy will always exist.

 

[Xtreme2damax]

I heard that a couple 3DS games have been dumped, however the games are unusable meaning that they can't be played on a 3DS or anything else. The 3DS seems to use really strong AES encryption making it nearly impossible to run homebrew let alone launching backups. Here's how someone explained it on another forum I frequent:

Let's see...


Whatever kind of data is dumped so far (from cartridges and internal flash) is encrypted.
This more or less means that no warez and no homebrew until the related encryptions are taken care of.

Easy? Think again. It took years for encryptions of systems like CPS2 to be broken. Now, 3DS is far worse since we have AES encryption here.
AES is nowhere near the relatively "pathetic" encryptions used on Nintendo DS, Sega's NAOMI GD-ROM, Capcom's CPS2, Sony's DRM (used on PSP, walkmans etc.) and the likes.


Now, IF the potential hacker is lucky enough there might be a security hole in the encryption used on the communication protocol of the cartridges. This will make piracy possible up to a degree. Notice the big red "if" there.

On the other hand, running homebrew on the thing is more complicated and more or less requires figuring out the whole protection mechanism, keys, etc.
Now, using current hardware, hacking around all that is next to impossible. The only possibility is Nintendo messing up badly on various different aspects, which is also next to impossible.


Imagine the X-BOX 360 piracy and homebrew state. Piracy is rampart while running homebrew is possible only on some specific hardware revision under specific circumstances.
Now, take the part of the system that can be modded out (the optical disc drive firmware) and you end up leaving no windows open. Add to that Nintendo not leaving any back doors on their systems (like Sony did with PS3) and you pretty much have a secure system.

Hate to break it to you guys, but that's the way it is. Having dumps and such is the easy part, everyone with the equipment and knowledge can do it and teach the rest how to do it too. Everything else however, is another matter.

h yes, forgot CPS3 encryption. Guess what? Compared to AES, that's pathetic too. There's a reason everything switches to AES nowadays, wireless networks, file archivers, disk encryption, hardware, younameit.

You can't just analyze and XOR the thing like with CPS (and even that took them years to accomplish since they started).

Now don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that breaking the protection will never happen. I'm saying that if the implementation is right, it will not happen for about the next dozen of years.

Don't expect to run backups or use homebrew for dozens of years at the very least unless an exploit or hole is found and that's if one is found, only then would piracy be possible to a degree, running actual homebrew would be more complicated.

Nintendo must have done something right with the current drm/copy protection scheme.

 

[o0jopak0o]

I heard that a couple 3DS games have been dumped, however the games are unusable meaning that they can't be played on a 3DS or anything else. The 3DS seems to use really strong AES encryption making it nearly impossible to run homebrew let alone launching backups. Here's how someone explained it on another forum I frequent:





Don't expect to run backups or use homebrew for dozens of years at the very least unless an exploit or hole is found and that's if one is found, only then would piracy be possible to a degree, running actual homebrew would be more complicated.

Nintendo must have done something right with the current drm/copy protection scheme.

Well I am hoping that someone will somehow finds an exploit. It is still too early to tell. But I have heard that 3DS games have backward compatibility does it mean that they don't?

 

[dexterlablab1]

Systems are always going to get hacked. It's not a question of if. It's a question of when. The only thing a company can do is constantly counter hacker methods as they arrive. And Nintendo is just horrible at doing so.

 

[gami]

Agree, there are no piracy protection that cannot be hacked..
If games were a lot cheaper it would reduce piracy and illegal downloading a little, i guess