Switch hackers defend the security measures in their own piracy program

[Len]

The Switch hacking saga continues with new developments from the now infamous group, Team Xecutor. These hackers recently released a payware-program which is used to pirate Nintendo Switch games. That’s bad within itself, but the situation has actually managed to get worse—for Team Xecuter themselves, that is.

A vulnerability researcher analyzed the program and was able to uncover that it includes a line of ‘brick code’. This turned out to be an anti-piracy measure that ends up bricking the Switch if a cracked version of the program is used. Yes, that’s right, the software that’s used for pirating games has it’s own protection to avoid being pirated itself. After this was discovered, Team Xecuter was naturally met with backlash. They’ve since released a statement to The Verge, trying to defend their actions. Take specific note of the underlined sentences:

“We do not ‘brick’ any consoles, ever. We do implement inconveniences to safeguard anti-tampering of our SX OS boot file to remain at a competitive advantage. It would simply be bad business to intentionally harm a user’s console.

Our product has been designed with the greatest possible stability and polish. Whenever someone is running our SX OS they can be assured they are running a safe and well-tested product. We cannot guarantee equal functionality and performance when any changes are made and therefore do not support any unauthorized modifications.“

So, Team Xecuter’s reasoning is that they’ve put security measures into their piracy program to stop anyone from tampering with it and the team clearly doesn’t support “any unauthorized modifications”. Well then, how do you think Nintendo feels about a program that’s used for tampering with the Switch hardware by means of unauthorized modifications? If this isn’t hypocrisy at it’s finest, I’m not quite sure what is. But wait, this story gets even better!

On top of Team Xecutor’s absurd statement, the group is also getting broiled over yet another discovery. It turns out that their program has been developed using code from another open-source hacking project. Due to this code being included, Team Xecutor has broken the agreement to the open-source licensing since their own program must be purchased.

So, let’s recap. This group has created piracy software which features its own anti-piracy security measures while also using code taken from another open source project which in turn nullifies the fact that this software is being sold thus also nullifying the need for there to even be anti-piracy security measures since the program should actually be free in the first place. Does any of that make sense to you? I hope so, because I’m still not done snickering hysterically about it.

At this point, there’s been no direct intervention from Nintendo. But, it would be surprising if the company isn’t aware of Team Xecutor’s actions by this point. If action is taken, considering all of the aforementioned factors of this situation it would seem like Nintendo likely has the grounds to completely shut Team Xecutor’s operations. We do at least know that Nintendo is making efforts to thwart pirates in other ways, as another hacker recently discovered the extensive security measures that the Big N has implemented into the Switch’s operating system. For one, the console is programmed to detect pirated copies of software, which then results in the system and the associated Nintendo Account being completely banned from accessing Nintendo’s online servers. With programs like this one from Team Xecutor now out in the wild, Nintendo may very well increase the number of roadblocks in the Switch OS to snuff out as many pirates as possible.