Nintendo Sets a Bounty of up to $20,000, Available to Anyone Who Hands over the Exploits for a Hacked Nintendo Switch
Calling all hackers! The ever-vigilant Nintendo is making big monetary moves to help protect their hardware from being homebrewed by users, and they’ll also pay you anywhere between $100 and $20,000 if you can seek out and expose vulnerabilities on a hacked Nintendo Switch. Any holes in the Switch’s security system can land you big and, not only will you get some cash, you’ll get to play a part in aiding the company in keeping piracy, cheating, hacking, and inappropriate content out of circulation.
HackerOne, the online “vulnerability coordination and bug bounty program” is a program that’s used by companies to keep exploits out of their system, and is also the program that Nintendo used to send out their hefty bounty call. Not only does Nintendo use the program, but large tech corporations such as GM, Uber, and Slack also use it to seek out users and experienced hackers for their applications and hardware.
It’s not a surprising move for Nintendo, seeing as when The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild was released, it was emulated onto PC almost immediately, and even supports 4K. Although the Wii U emulation tool, which has existed for quite some time, is responsible for this, it’s hard for Nintendo to ignore the blatant piracy of their beloved Nintendo Switch launch title.
Just a few months ago, Nintendo made a similar request for the Nintendo 3DS. Now, with the Nintendo Switch available to gamers worldwide, they can seek the same services from users that have had enough time to tinker around with the new console’s mechanics and code.
Nintendo has already given bounty awards to at least three different hackers who have identified exploits for both the Nintendo Switch and the Nintendo 3DS, so you can expect some firmware updates to be pushed out sometime in the near future.