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A recent leak shows that Nintendo has "stalked" various console hackers with private investigators, trying to coerce them into settling on an NDA. I thought th

by meibo 6y ago

A recent leak shows that Nintendo has "stalked" various console hackers with private investigators, trying to coerce them into settling on an NDA. I thought this was very interesting - is this kind of behaviour/planning common in other industries as well, or is this a consequence of Nintendo's/Japanese company culture? Marcan(popular console hacker, often seen on HN as well) recently tweeted about his experience, apparently noting that the company seems to have changed their ways in recent years: https://twitter.com/marcan42/status/1341330839993339905 https://twitter.com/marcan42/status/1341330839993339905

tinus_hn 6y ago
I’ve seen similar stories about eastern european companies employing the same tactics against people who reverse engineer their products.
lima 6y ago
Engaging PIs to contact reverse engineers/"hackers" is a reasonably common approach in the gaming industry, not just regarding hardware, but also software modifications/cheating/some forms of modding.
- invokestatic 6y ago
  I used to write and sell cheat software for PC games (I work in anti-cheat now). I’ve never experienced this soft of behavior, nor have any of the many contacts I have in the space. I suspect this only occurs in litigious companies (Blizzard and Nintendo both immediately pop in my mind). Typically, hackers get scooped up by games companies and switch to anti-cheat, at least in my observations. Edit: I do know it’s fairly common for companies to have “dox” on hackers. Actually making use of that information, like hiring a PI, is quite an escalation.
Abishek_Muthian 6y ago
>or is this a consequence of Nintendo's/Japanese company culture? Now this makes me wonder, because Sony went after George Hotz with guns blazing for his 'OtherOS' efforts on PS3 until he settled the lawsuit on the condition to 'never hack Sony products'! At the same time, Sony has been very welcoming about aftermarket OS efforts on their Android smartphones, they had their official AOSP portal, Jolla support etc. I guess, the bottomline is would it affect the business?
- ascagnel_ 6y ago
  Your timeline is a little mixed up, and I think fixing it will clear up what happened: - Sony shipped the PS3 with "Other OS" functionality that provided limited hardware support to a guest Linux OS. - Sony removed that "Other OS" feature without providing a reason why. At that point, the main system's protection was still in place. - Hotz, after seeing the spotlight on Sony for removing "Other OS", was able to breach the main system's protection without any hardware modification. - Sony went after Hotz for breaching their OS. The bottom line was business -- providing full hardware support of "Other OS" would let you distribute Linux games without Sony's blessing (and cut of revenues or developer kits), which ultimately wouldn't be as successful without the absolutely massive marketing and deal-making abilities of one of these platform holders. On the other hand, breaking the main system OS allowed things like pirated games and unsigned code (game hacks) to run on the system, which is hugely problematic for a console that had most of its security on the client machines. The big PSN hack in 2011 followed shortly after Hotz broke the system, and while I've never seen it 100% confirmed, there were rumors at the time that the hack revealed enough of a vector inside the network that the hackers were basically unstoppable.
  - NikolaeVarius 6y ago
    I dont remember it going like that all. I explicitly remember OtherOs being removed because of this hack. http://self.gutenberg.org/articles/george_hotz#cite_note-12 http://self.gutenberg.org/articles/george_hotz#cite_note-12 Lets go to World Heritage Encyclopedia. > January 22, 2010, he announced that he had successfully hacked the machine by enabling himself read and write access to the machine's system memory and having hypervisor level access to the machine's processor > On January 26, 2010, Hotz released the exploit to the public. It was done on the original firmware (OFW) 3.15, then using his codes he made it into a 3.15 CFW, or Custom Firmware. It requires the OtherOS function of the machine, and consists of a Linux kernel module and gaining control of the machine's hypervisor via bus glitching > On March 28, 2010, Sony responded by announcing their intention to release a PlayStation 3 firmware update that would remove the OtherOS feature from all models,[17] a feature that was already absent on the newer Slim revisions of the machine. Why lie about something trivially verifiable?
rsync 6y ago
"A recent leak shows that Nintendo has "stalked" various console hackers with private investigators, trying to coerce them into settling on an NDA." I know nothing else about this, this has almost zero intersection with my current interests, and I have no prior interests in this area. But boy-howdy am I tempted to perform, or pay to have performed, a minimal level of reverse engineering or independent development of (Nintendo platform) just to see if they'll attempt this. Never mind the infinite free publicity for me, rsync.net, 0x.co, etc. ... the comedy factor alone of their PIs vs. our two mile long private road would be worth the legal fees. I'm struggling to find a reason not to do this... EDIT: my ranch is adjacent to, and surrounded by, Skywalker Ranch ... imagine Nintendo stooges wandering into/through that ... so many lulz.
- mzs 6y ago
  further along it says that the people largely responsible have retired, so you might not get any worthwhile reaction.
marcan_42 6y ago
I believe this approach came from NOA (the USA branch) and specifically the Anti-Piracy team led by Jodi Daugherty. It seems things shifted to a different organization after that, and she is now retired.

by meibo 6y ago

tinus_hn 6y ago

I’ve seen similar stories about eastern european companies employing the same tactics against people who reverse engineer their products.

lima 6y ago

Engaging PIs to contact reverse engineers/"hackers" is a reasonably common approach in the gaming industry, not just regarding hardware, but also software modifications/cheating/some forms of modding.

invokestatic 6y ago
I used to write and sell cheat software for PC games (I work in anti-cheat now). I’ve never experienced this soft of behavior, nor have any of the many contacts I have in the space. I suspect this only occurs in litigious companies (Blizzard and Nintendo both immediately pop in my mind). Typically, hackers get scooped up by games companies and switch to anti-cheat, at least in my observations. Edit: I do know it’s fairly common for companies to have “dox” on hackers. Actually making use of that information, like hiring a PI, is quite an escalation.

Abishek_Muthian 6y ago

>or is this a consequence of Nintendo's/Japanese company culture? Now this makes me wonder, because Sony went after George Hotz with guns blazing for his 'OtherOS' efforts on PS3 until he settled the lawsuit on the condition to 'never hack Sony products'! At the same time, Sony has been very welcoming about aftermarket OS efforts on their Android smartphones, they had their official AOSP portal, Jolla support etc. I guess, the bottomline is would it affect the business?

ascagnel_ 6y ago
Your timeline is a little mixed up, and I think fixing it will clear up what happened: - Sony shipped the PS3 with "Other OS" functionality that provided limited hardware support to a guest Linux OS. - Sony removed that "Other OS" feature without providing a reason why. At that point, the main system's protection was still in place. - Hotz, after seeing the spotlight on Sony for removing "Other OS", was able to breach the main system's protection without any hardware modification. - Sony went after Hotz for breaching their OS. The bottom line was business -- providing full hardware support of "Other OS" would let you distribute Linux games without Sony's blessing (and cut of revenues or developer kits), which ultimately wouldn't be as successful without the absolutely massive marketing and deal-making abilities of one of these platform holders. On the other hand, breaking the main system OS allowed things like pirated games and unsigned code (game hacks) to run on the system, which is hugely problematic for a console that had most of its security on the client machines. The big PSN hack in 2011 followed shortly after Hotz broke the system, and while I've never seen it 100% confirmed, there were rumors at the time that the hack revealed enough of a vector inside the network that the hackers were basically unstoppable.
- NikolaeVarius 6y ago
  I dont remember it going like that all. I explicitly remember OtherOs being removed because of this hack. http://self.gutenberg.org/articles/george_hotz#cite_note-12 http://self.gutenberg.org/articles/george_hotz#cite_note-12 Lets go to World Heritage Encyclopedia. > January 22, 2010, he announced that he had successfully hacked the machine by enabling himself read and write access to the machine's system memory and having hypervisor level access to the machine's processor > On January 26, 2010, Hotz released the exploit to the public. It was done on the original firmware (OFW) 3.15, then using his codes he made it into a 3.15 CFW, or Custom Firmware. It requires the OtherOS function of the machine, and consists of a Linux kernel module and gaining control of the machine's hypervisor via bus glitching > On March 28, 2010, Sony responded by announcing their intention to release a PlayStation 3 firmware update that would remove the OtherOS feature from all models,[17] a feature that was already absent on the newer Slim revisions of the machine. Why lie about something trivially verifiable?

rsync 6y ago

"A recent leak shows that Nintendo has "stalked" various console hackers with private investigators, trying to coerce them into settling on an NDA." I know nothing else about this, this has almost zero intersection with my current interests, and I have no prior interests in this area. But boy-howdy am I tempted to perform, or pay to have performed, a minimal level of reverse engineering or independent development of (Nintendo platform) just to see if they'll attempt this. Never mind the infinite free publicity for me, rsync.net, 0x.co, etc. ... the comedy factor alone of their PIs vs. our two mile long private road would be worth the legal fees. I'm struggling to find a reason not to do this... EDIT: my ranch is adjacent to, and surrounded by, Skywalker Ranch ... imagine Nintendo stooges wandering into/through that ... so many lulz.

mzs 6y ago
further along it says that the people largely responsible have retired, so you might not get any worthwhile reaction.

marcan_42 6y ago

I believe this approach came from NOA (the USA branch) and specifically the Anti-Piracy team led by Jodi Daugherty. It seems things shifted to a different organization after that, and she is now retired.