Developer Yellows8, known for the BrowserHax and Menuhax 3DS exploits, just released ctr-httpwn, an exploit on the 3DS that allows people to bypass required sysupdates on older 3DS firmwares.

In other words, it lets you access online features such as the Nintendo eShop, or DLC content, from your 3DS running an older firmware. Yup, you can have your homebrew cake and eat it.

For some of you, this also means you can now downgrade your 3DS and still access online features. Again, Homebrews + online access for you == best of both worlds 🙂

This also blocks normal sysupdates downloads, which in itself is a good feature for those who want to stay on a low firmware and avoid a stupid update mistake.

As for all “network” related hacks, there’s a risk Nintendo could figure things out and potentially ban accounts or consoles using this trick. If you access the eShop, you’ll probably need some personal identifying data and I assume Nintendo could cross reference that with “weird” behavior? So consider that there is some amount of risk here.

Additionally, this hack sends and receives data from Yellows8’s server. Yellows8 ensures that significant effort has been made to ensure no personally identifying data is being sent from your device to non-Nintendo servers, but if you’re paranoid you’ll want to check the source code to confirm. He also insists that you should not download compiled binaries or config files from untrusted sources.

ctr-httpwn – How to use

From the Readme:

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Do not use this from Old3DS-browserhax. Do not use this when the system date is not set correctly(like with the browser-version-check bypass). Do not run this app more than once when ctr-httpwn is already active under the sysmodule.

Just run the app, then if successful return to hbmenu. For using the system eShop application on <10.0.0-X, you must use HANS-eShop included with the homebrew starter-kit(this should be the one updated on March 20, 2016, or later). For everything else, and for using system-eShop-app on >=v10.0.0-X, you can just return to Home Menu from hbmenu. This can be done by pressing the START button, then use the option for returning to Home Menu without rebooting(you can use HANS if you really want to, except for eShop on >=10.4.0-X, returning to Home Menu is not required).

When using HANS-eShop on a very old system-version such as 9.6.0-X, eShop-app may display an error the first time. Returning to hbmenu then running HANS-eShop again fixes this issue caused(?) by friends-service. You’ll have to repeat this every time you boot into *hax payloads for using HANS-eShop.

In some rare(?) cases, during eShop startup it may unexpectedly start some sort of NNID-related(?) setup(unknown, NNID was mentioned in the Japanese text on a JPN New3DS at least) even though a NNID has been linked a long while. There’s no known way to definitely reproduce this. There doesn’t appear to be any other affects(eShop/elsewhere) once fully loaded into eShop however.

ctr-httpwn – Download

ctr-httpwn can be downloaded from the official github here.

Source: Yellows8 via Smealum