You may recall that, in December, Nintendo released a new “Remastered” update for Swapnote. The whole situation was rather confusing. Not only was there any indication of what was new or changed, but it seemed random to issue an update for an application that hadn’t been touched in quite some time.
Now it’s been made clear what the situation was about. As pointed out by OatmealDome, Nintendo only put out the patch to address a vulnerability in which an attacker could potentially run any sort of code they created over StreetPass. MrNbaYoh earned nearly $1,700 by reporting the exploit to Nintendo.
[Swapnote]
Wondering why Swapnote for the 3DS was updated last month? This is (likely) why.
A vulnerability in the message parser that could be exploited over StreetPass was fixed. It would allow an attacker to run any code they wanted.
Grats to @MrNbaYoh for the $1k bounty. https://t.co/O1ncHhGlF2
— OatmealDome (@OatmealDome) January 18, 2021
Swapnote, a messaging app, first debuted at the end of 2011. Although it originally supported SpotPass, that feature was cut about two years later.
Thanks to Jake for the tip.
