Nintendo Switch: the race to reverse engineer Team Xecuter’s piracy CFW
The Nintendo Switch has been hacked wide open for a few months, but, somewhat surprisingly, options to actually pirate games have not massively surfaced yet.
That was, until Team Xecuter released their “SX” Custom Firmware a few days ago: allegedly, the hacking team’s CFW makes it very easy to load pirated Switch games, which are already widely available on the usual warez and torrent sites.
SX CFW seems to be the easier solution to pirate Nintendo Switch games currently
Although some users of SX have complained that not all games work (a list on Reddit, at the time of writing, actually has yet to name a single backup game that accepts to load on SX OS), according to many the CFW delivers on its promise to be an easy solution for pirates.
This is not to say “open source” solutions don’t exist for piracy on the Nintendo Switch. A thread on GBATemp has been going on for about a week where a few tinkerers are leveraging some of the existing open source hacking tools in order to run backups. The technique consists in tricking the Nintendo switch by hijacking a game for which a proper license is owned, and redirecting it to load a “backup” of a different game.
But given the 40+ pages (and growing) length of the thread discussing “open source” backup loading on the Switch, and with many people complaining the technique is too complex, it seems Team Xecuter’s solution is a much easier option so far for pirates.
A Race to reverse engineer SX CFW
Multiple hackers have shared scripts and tools to help with reverse engineering Team Xecuter’s custom firmware. But not everyone has the same goals: some hackers have already called out that they don’t want Team Xecuter to profit from piracy and might be willing to get the thing reverse engineered in order to kill their business, while others are probably looking to replicate the backup loading functionality from their custom firwmare.
A few veteran hackers from the Switch scene have shared a few tools to help those who want to reverse engineer the code from Team Xecuter. Naehrwert for example has shared a script to unpack the custom firmware, and that script was later updated by Hexkyz for version 1.1 of Team Xecuter’s software. There has also been a stream of announcement from multiple people claiming they were close to decrypting the custom firmware. None of these seem to have led to anything concrete (a public release) yet.
The issues with SX CFW
A few people have warned against using the SX custom firmware. An early version of their custom firmware has been reported to burn the fuses on the console in some cases, which is an irreversible change. Although Team Xecuter state they have now fixed the issue, this confirms once again that running unverified hacks on your console can lead to bad outcomes.
This is not the only concern with the proprietary piracy CFW. Others are concerned that the requirement to activate the pirate OS online puts some of their information at risk. It is difficult to say for sure that some of the users information doesn’t end up in the hands of Team Xecuter, or in Nintendo’s, intentionally or not. With clear warnings from SciresM about the risks of playing pirated Switch games online, some users of SX are probably playing a dangerous game.
Despite all the problems surrounding the SX release, and the fact that open source solutions have been around to hack the Switch for a while now, it seems that the appeal of piracy is a very strong one: multiple resellers of the SX OS are apparently having a hard time keeping up with order volumes, and prospective buyers having to wait longer than expected to get their license code for SX OS.
Note: for obvious reasons I am not linking to thread or sites that explain how to pirate games on your Nintendo Switch. As always, thanks for your understanding
lot of peeps going to get banned
Don’t think they care.
I can not care. I never used the online and never will since PS3, PS4 and now Nintendo Swich. The online sucks for the consoles!
don’t buy TX products!!!!
Shut up. Tx is a well established company that has given so many Xbox and Xbox 360 hacks back in the day.
Yeah right… Just for your information TX is don’t know sh*t:=! Thye just got money, they use free solutions leaked or given on internet and turn it to money making solutions! I know this from fact as i myself gave out free for all pdf explaning how to hack or xbox 360 slim corona mobos. I shared it for free, tx made an adapter and didn’t give credit. Wake up guys this is TX! This is what they do
Point me how to emulate cartridge slot, seens no one have it, TX is the first to be delivering.
Despite theses offenses that they cannot do anything, they try to reverse engineer to steal their method, they even build an alternate UI over the original, they are way ahead of anyone right now.
https://github.com/StudentBlake/XCI-Explorer/releases
TX Did and never did anything, always just copied stuff, and any real hacker knows it.
Making a hacking device that will brick your switch on top of that… really?
they didnt hack anything.
What kind of tight bastards won’t pay $25 to play free games, and would rather wait for it to be cracked. Tut tut tut..
already banned
I also wonder if they have built a nand formatter inside their wonderful sx os. It looks exactly like they did take some ideas from the gateway 3ds. And gateway had a built in nand formatter that bricked quite a few 3ds’s in its time. I think tx expects that people will try to get around their “licensed” activation scheme and will probably try to punish it. I will not be surprised. This fuse burnout is also interesting to note.
Thank you kind sir for your words of wisdom…..I feel the same way. All this TX “license” BS…..aint gonna last for too long. They are trying to make as much money as possible before a FREE method is released. They know for a fact that its only a matter of time. TX hasnt even been relevant in any of the console hacking scene for years! This very well could be TX last product.
I agree. They were cool when the original xbox was around. Then again they had some ideas (again built on top of free solutions) in the 360 era with rgh. The quality of their products is good but tends to be very pricey. I liked them before but not know, they are basically greedy bstrds.
First?
Couldn’t make it.
Heh, when Flow cracks vita he is the man of the year. Executer who always want money for their work and give one the best solution on the market (for xbox and switch) they are bad and watch out for their work. I was wondering why u didnt post anyhting about them. Now i know.
I don’t agree with the selling of hacks however, devs should be compensated for their works somehow. This reminds me an awful lot of the early days with the PS3 and groups selling those horrible dongles.
Its such a shame that they will profit directly from piracy.
Waiting for my SX Pro to arrive. Not interested in viewing/buying overpriced games in eshop. Not paying for online with Nintendo, and their online games suck. So even if i got banned, I will not care.
Will stick to PS4 for my online gaming.
How interesting that despite you’re bashing Nintendo, you’re still dying to get your hands on their games. No need to make excuses!
It’s not a secret that Nintendo games are overpriced, including 30 year old games they continue to make a profit on via virtual console. So it seems the tables have now turned. If Nintendo’s prices were more competitive then maybe people would think twice.
Everyone running a CFW, backup loader included or not, is running a dangerous game when connecting with Nintendo’s servers. Team Xecuter might be questionable for making money with piracy but I have to say that SX OS did surprise with the level of maturity already provided with the 1.0 release. Right now there are only a couple of carts left that make problems so if you offer a product which is well made why not charge for it?
Remember how the Gateway 3ds software had bricking code in it? I’m surprised how there are still people who want to use closed source software on their switch after that.
Card2 games do not work, so basically every new game will be a Card2 game. I’d say if TX can fix that within 2 weeks they’ve earned their money. People had huge issues with Gateway, before they clearly became jerks and abusers, but without Gateway the 3DS scene would have lagged behind. It helped push people to beat them and offer better free solutions.
Competition.
We all win in the end.
Hacking a hacked firmware. What have we come to. We are not animals. LOL
This is such an oxymoron. Trying to make a CFW out of a CFW.
Or people could just pay for it. Not everything needs to be free. If yo can afford a Nintendo Switch, you should be able to afford a licence for their OS.
The same can be said about paying for games. If you can afford a Switch you can afford to pay for the games.
That goes without saying. People who buy this will not stop buying games. If there is a certain game you need to play online, you’re going to have to pay for it.
Actually I’m not interesting on playing pirate games, I just like to use homebrew apps and emulators, and that dongle looks pretty cool and easy to run any payload. The OS looks great, and even though I’m not interested on piracy, it’s nice to be able to backup my own games, so I don’t have to switch cartridges. So if you remove the piracy matter from the topic, you will see it’s fine that they charge you for their work. Although I believe they should open the OS and just make money with the dongle.
Wow, I actually have high regards for this site but deleting a comment which doesn’t align with the totally negative perception of SX OS here is not what I expected. Always thought comments were meant for different perspectives but I guess there should be only one in this case.
Can’t hate on someone capitalizing. If Gateway 3DS didn’t exist I bet it would’ve taken longer to get a free CFW that could do everything it did.
Ok so where is the best place to buy one?
>An early version of their custom firmware has been reported to burn the fuses on the console in some cases, which is an irreversible change. Although Team Xecuter state they have now fixed the issue, this confirms once again that running unverified hacks on your console can lead to bad outcomes.
This only applied to people who used this unofficial hacky way to update their low fw system to a high fw system, for what it’s worth. The method allowed, to my understanding, people to update to a higher firmware without burning the efuse that’s usually burnt upon updating officially to prevent downgrading. In this way, they could downgrade the system whenever a coldboot exploit was released and they’d still be able to play the newest games (and go online?) in the meantime. SX OS assumed the system was actually on the version it was on and burnt the efuse like it should have been. It was fixed in 1.1 though.
A donation is the best way to pay off behind every piracy/hacking.
Does anyone know where the Switch games are? Can you give me a point in the right direction please? Thanks 🙂
It’s in the internet!
The LFS, or “donor” technique is free and DAMN easy.
– Install a demo from eshop (a few of’em while you’re at it)
– DL the XCI you wanna play
– Extract it by using a soft
– Patch its “main” file using the demo title with a simple html application
– copy on your SD
– launch the NS through the ROMFS boot enabled by fusée gelée
– have fun
The worst things I faced were the Skyrim savebugs…And it had nothing to do with the hack !
Awesome game though, just way overpriced on NS.
So… Would you say that this is a good time to invest in their $50 pro thing, or would it be better to wait? Im not exactly sure how this thing would work, but I’m ultimately hoping to have a save backup manager and some homebrew (notably for ps1, ds, and gba)