Nintendo has a bit of a security crisis on its hands. Things were already a little unnerving, but with the arrival of very (very) newly implemented firmware update 7.0.0. there’s a bigger problem at play. It took only four hours to hack.
The update brought improvements to system stability and new security codes, as usual, with the intent of assisting the system to ware off potential hacking threats. And just as we breathed a sigh of relief thinking that this would mean a more secure Switch for everyone… four hours later, news spread across Reddit and Twitter that ‘elmirorac’ had managed to crack the update with shocking speed.
The danger is that these hacked consoles could end up sold to unknowing buyers, who are then holding and using compromised systems, putting their personal information at risk. Prominent hackers in the community have said that the only real fix now is a hardware revision, such as a new chipset for every unit to replace the existing Nvidia Tegra hardware.
These hacked units are also able to cheat in online games, so it’s not simply a matter of needing to have a hacked console in your hands to be affected. Everyone’s enjoyment of the Nintendo online community will be directly impacted.
There are, of course, benign uses for hacked units—such as emulators and adding themes—so we encourage our readership to approach the issue with nuance.
