About a year ago Nintendo released their latest video gaming console, the Wii U. Since 2006, the Wii has led to one of the most active homebrew scenes after its security system was completely bypassed. This talk will discuss the improvements made in Wii U's architecture and explain how it was broken in less than 31 days. The talk is targeted at those who hack (or design) embedded system security, but gamers might also find it interesting.
The talk will consist of several parts. First, we will discuss the Wii U: what it is, what makes it tick, and how it compares to its predecessor, the Wii.
Next, we will cover two different approaches that we used to attack the Wii U system. The focus will be on how our results were achieved instead of on what those results are, so you can reproduce the attacks at home. Along the way we'll describe the Wii U's security architecture.
The third and final part of the talk will cover where to go from here: What is broken, what is yet to be broken, things that still have to be done to create a viable homebrew ecosystem, the balance between the effort required and the reward for users and hackers, and the potential upsides and downsides of different approaches.
Basic knowledge of embedded systems and CPU architectures is recommended for attendees, although we will try to explain required concepts as we go along.
Before and after the talk we will also be available in the hackcenter for those who would like to discuss further details or embedded security in general.