A little over one year after its debut, and a few months after the discovery of a universal exploit, the Nintendo Switch 2 has been hacked, with the first jailbreak option allowing users to mod games and run homebrew software on any current system. However, this isn’t a permanent jailbreak, as the exploit requires a specific original Switch game to run every time the system is booted.
This new exploit is a software-only, tethered jailbreak for the Nintendo Switch 2 that allows running arbitrary native code on any system on the latest firmware. This means that users can run homebrew, mod Nintendo Switch 2 games, back up save files, and access most of the Nintendo Switch 2’s peripherals. To demonstrate what can be achieved with this new jailbreak, the exploit developer modded Mario Kart World by adding a few additional characters, such as Peter Griffin and Hatsune Miku.
Given that it usually takes years to find vulnerabilities that allow jailbreaking any gaming system, it won’t surprise anyone that the first Nintendo Switch 2 jailbreak has been developed using AI tools such as OpenAICodex. The first step was finding a suitable backward-compatible original Nintendo Switch game, then establishing initial code execution via a 32-bit integer overflow bug in the targeted game’s array handling, then manipulating process permissions and hijacking the system loading routines until code execution was reached.
For obvious reasons, we cannot share any more details on this first Nintendo Switch 2 jailbreak, but we had the chance to watch the video showcasing modded Mario Kart World and check out the code repository, so we can confirm it is legit. However, since the developer identified the Nintendo Switch game required for the exploit, it will likely take little time for Nintendo to remove it from the eShop and fix the vulnerability.
Still, a Nintendo Switch 2 jailbreak opens a world of possibilities for the system. Given how vibrant the modding scene is for many PC games, including emulated titles, having mods for Nintendo Switch 2 games would be amazing. As would be having the possibility to learn more about the NVIDIADLSS implementation of the system, which has been confirmed to be quite different from the regular upscaler supported by NVIDIARTX GPUs.
And seeing what some have achieved on modded original Nintendo Switch consoles, including running PC versions of games such as Final Fantasy VII Remakesurprisingly well on them, we could be in for a lot of very interesting projects.
About the author: Francesco De Meo has been covering video games and technology since 2012, starting his career at small outlets like Gamersyndrome and GeekSnack.
After joining Wccftech gaming section in 2015, he quickly expanded his video gaming coverage with in-depth reporting, interviews with iconic industry figures such as Grasshopper Manufacture founder and No More Heroes creator Goichi “Suda51” Suda, Resident Evil series creator Shinji Mikami, Team NINJA’s president and Nioh series director Fumihiko Yasuda, and Silent Hill creator Keiichiro Toyama, reviews and on-the-ground coverage of major industry events such as Gamescom and E3.
When he’s not reporting or reviewing, Francesco can be found playing the genres he loves most, spending time with his six cats, reading, writing music, playing guitar and drumming for his progressive rock band.
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