The Nintendo Switch, the just-released replacement for the Wii gaming console, dares you to hack it.
The console is already a pawn in cyber-arsenals; and now, Nintendo has ponied up a $20,000 bug bounty via HackerOne for anyone able to actually crack the machine, uncovering hardware security vulnerabilities.
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Ostensibly, the idea is to prevent piracy. But the focus on security is also a bit of a blow to the “homebrew” community, which is devoted to essentially jailbreaking Nintendo devices in order to customize them with their own code, or to run games they’ve developed themselves.
The minimum bounty payout is $100, with the $20,000 reward reserved for the most serious of flaws. The reward amount depends on the “importance” of the information (if the vulnerability is severe, easy-to-exploit, etc.) and the quality of the report. Nintendo is focused on preventing piracy and cheating foremost, but also system vulnerabilities like privilege escalation and kernel takeover.
Source: Info Security
