You know all those stories about people who hack into tech companies in such impressive fashion that those companies immediately offer them jobs? Nintendo won’t do that. But they will offer you cash.
Partnering with the HackerOne group, Nintendo is offering bounties ranging from $100 to $20,000 to anyone who can find security vulnerabilities in the 3DS. Given that hackers and modders have had their way with the portable system for four years now, I imagine there will be some takers.
Specifically, Nintendo says:
Below are examples of types of activities that Nintendo is focused on preventing:
- Piracy, including:
- Game application dumping
- Copied game application execution
- Cheating, including:
- Game application modification
- Save data modification
- Dissemination of inappropriate content to children
Below are examples of vulnerabilities that Nintendo is interested in receiving information about:
- System vulnerabilities regarding the Nintendo 3DS™ family of systems
- Privilege escalation on ARM11 userland
- ARM11 kernel takeover
- ARM9 userland takeover
- ARM9 kernel takeover
- Vulnerabilities regarding Nintendo-published applications for the Nintendo 3DS™ family of systems
- ARM11 userland takeover
- Hardware vulnerabilities regarding the Nintendo 3DS™ family of systems
- Low-cost cloning
- Security key detection via information leaks
The actual amount of cash you get will be determined by Nintendo, so if you discover something and send it their way, keep in mind that $100-$20,000 figure is a pretty big range. If you do want to submit a report, here’s where you go.