DS Brick Loader Will Kill Your Nintendo DS

[wraggster]

According to logs that were posted on the internet a coder by the name of Darkfader has released a Bricking tool which will kill any Nintendo DS that uses PassMe/FlashMe and any of the following cards Supercard, M3 Adapter and the GBA Media Player.

Basically for now you must hold off trying any new homebrew unless you can guarentee 100% that the person supplying it is safe:

Brakken posted this:

DarkFader, the person who cracked the Nintendo DS, was behind the creation of the NeoFlash, the MAN who ran the Nintendo DS ROM release group GST (Golden Sun Team) has released a small program that will erase your Nintendo DS firmware, GBAMP firmware and/or your SuperCard Firmware and the release appears to be supported and endorsed by the DSDEV (#dsdev on EFNET IRC) community of dev's (who most recieve free NeoFlash devkits). This Bricker does not destroy NeoFlash carts? Could there possibly be any correlation?

The code used in the original bricking application has been ripped and now is being added to other homebrew and roms so if you run one without checking it first you'll end up with a dead Nintendo DS, GBAMP and/or SuperCard. This is a very counter-productive move on the Nintendo DS's Development Community as their code to disrupt piracy (which they helped create) is now being used in their own programs! Currently there is no way to test for this bricking code!

Just image going to run NESDS and having your Nintendo DS die! Luckily, if you use the FlashMe Firmware replacement for the Nintendo DS you can recover from this deadly attack by booting up the system any holding "A+B+START+SELECT" then loading the Firmware from a flashcart other then your SuperCard (as it's most likely been destroyed).

Some Conversation off IRC that was posted:

<DarkFader> yes
<xxxxx> what's all this about a trojan?
<DarkFader> DS program that erases some things
<xxxxx> hmmm... payback for something?
<DarkFader> firmware of supercard, media player, DS
<DarkFader> nah
<DarkFader> for fun of course
<xxxxx> heh, I see
<DarkFader> it also erases the xg/neoflash card and CF inside movie player
<DarkFader> I still need to add support for more devices :)
<DarkFader> M3, G6, SD cards
<xxxxx> hmmm... for what purpose? laughs? :)
<DarkFader> it will put ppl on alert
<xxxxx> and leave them with a hell of a lot of broken DS'es
<DarkFader> it can be fixed
<DarkFader> but still very annoying to fix it all :)
<xxxxx> indeed
<xxxxx> but won't stuff like this kill the homebrew scene?
<xxxxx> no one wants to load anything in fear of frying their DS.. or flash card
<DarkFader> hmm

There you have it folks please do not touch it :(

[sitexec]

My point of view:

As a nds and psp user/dev (neither bricked thankfully) i find this plane insulting. To release a bricker just to get people to kill their nds's is absolutly retarded. Absolutly serves no use. If this kid thinks this is fun, im sorry to say, he might be retarded. No wait, he IS retarded. Neither the psp or nds brickers are hard to make, but for some reason some people find it funny to get people to brick them. It would be one thing, if they could infect them, or do something with them, but just bricking them is absolutly retarded, and so is someone who thinks its funny.

[wraggster]

its very sad and i went into #dsdev myself and well im extremely unhappy with them, the atitude was all wrong and basically they should be ashamed of themselves.

No other scene would stand for it, lame bastard he is

[wraggster]

and if they think this will end at the loader of darkfaders they are grossly mistaken, the next step will see some idiot include it hidden in a homebrew game.

what lamers, no other scene i know would stand for it esp by one of their developers

[pubjoe]

I find it hard to believe that darkfader released this to purposely brick peoples DS.

He is always a very helpfull coder that is at the very beginning of new scenes.

I have been in contact with darkfader before once when I had a smashed screen on my GP32, he was more than helpful to me and sent me a spare he had from his own GP32 that he had "bricked".

Generally, he is an all-round nice bloke in my experience. I CAN believe that he'd make such an experimental program, but I CAN'T belive he would release it to unsuspecting users. More likely this is somebody who has got hold of the code and is scaremongering for some unknown reason.

Brakken, on the other hand, is a noise maker who allways seems to be shouting off about people and is a bit of a conspiracy freak, it goes without saying who I would trust out of the two.

[wraggster]

i spoke to the devers in #dsdev and it was indeed darkfader and theres an irc log of the whole situation, needless to say its extremely disapointing

[inde]

Hi guys, im posting on just about any ds forum i can find.
as you all know darkfader is the blame for all this, and believe it or not but many people over at dsdev praise this bricker.


surely this isnt legal, destroying peoples property.
just becasue sales of his own flashcart brand Neoflash have dropped, why should we all suffer for this.
its pathetic the way hes trying to eliminate competition.

[colindecon]

i dont get it??? ur happy he relesed it????????????/ why????????????

[wraggster]

no one here is happy infact im extremely pissed at the situation

[ptr.exe]

Why would someone bother doing this?

One more reason i'm not using homebrew on my beloved DS.

[wraggster]

the DS is great for homebrew too. scummvm is the best port on any system

[colindecon]

well people should come to this site first for confermation on what home brew works. try to spread the word dcemu.co.uk is the safe place to be. maybe wraggster can start a campaine to inform of homebrew makers to come to this site to cheack and download the software.

[wraggster]

the real danger i see is if people download from dodgy/warez sites and P2P

use extreme caution

[ptr.exe]

Was the intent for this bricker to be hidden in warez files? as to stop people downloading as appose to buying the game.

[wraggster]

maybe but he released it in an hentai viewer too so he obviously went for both markets

[ultros]

how exactly is this firmware bricking possible? i thought, you have to bridge two contacts to flash the firmware for extra security. i just read it in the flashme faq.
so how can code access the firmware, if the contacts are not bridged?

and another question is: did anyone "try" this bricker? i mean, is it really working? or are we afraid of a dummy?
and if yes, are there news about users who accidently bricked ther DS's?