My First Experience in CS

Like many kids in my cohort of gen z, my parents got me a DS Lite for my birthday one year. New Super Mario Bros., some wacky phineas and ferb game, lego batman, you get the idea. And when the time came, I upgraded to a 3ds. After getting a few games for it, I was quickly annoyed at the price point of the games. $40 for a single game seemed far too high a price.

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Somehow, I'm not sure how, (probably the all-knowing youtube algorithm) I stumbled on something called custom firmware that promised freedom of customization, homebrewed games, and of course, free games. The exploit used was called "soundhax", (shoutout to nedwill on github). It was as simple as placing some files on my SD card, and playing a corrupted .m4a file, then boom. I got booted into the homebrew menu that is instantly recognizable to any of my fellow 3ds modders.

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But that wasn't it. As I quickly discovered, this was not the custom firmware I was promised. I could play homebrewed games, but as far as I was concerned, that was it. No custom themes, no free (official) games. As I would later find out, soundhax didn't fully enable running unsigned code. sigh.

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Fast forward a few years and for christmas I get the new nintendo 3ds. This time featuring face-tracking 3d, and a second joystick, (more of a thinkpad-esque nub to be honest). But yet again, the itch to mod was still there. At that point in time, it was less about tinkering and more about just wanting free games. (I was still in middle school mind you). So off we went.

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Although I cannot for the life of me remember the exact method, It involved me downgrading my 3ds to get a OTP, and install the cfw, and then using godmode9, a homebrew file browser, to bring the custom firmware'd 3ds back up to the newest verson.

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I failed horribly. I'm still not sure what I did wrong, but I'm sure it was related to following a video tutorial (something heavily frowned upon in the modding community [probably for that exact reason]). Before I knew it, my 3ds was a brick. Fortunately my dad called nintendo, and we were able to ship my 3ds to them to be repaired. A few weeks later, my (basically) brand new 3ds arrived back to me, and I took a break from modding.

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But I'm a glutton for punishment.

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It wasn't more than a few weeks later, and I was already back at it, but this time with a trick up my sleeve. I had asked for an r4 flashcart for my birthday, and after waiting for a long time, It finally arrived from china. (god bless my parents).

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Using what I believe is still the go-to method, which had just been discovered, I used "ntrboothax". To compress a lot of reading into a short description, Using a magnet to trick the 3ds into thinking the shell was closed, holding down a certain combination on buttons, (start, select, x, power), the 3ds would read data from the flashcart as trusted code, allowing the custom firmware to be installed.

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I held my breath for what felt like an eternity.

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But it had worked.

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Finally all of those free games I'd been promised, custom themes, and above all else, freedom to have complete control over a system. something that was MINE. As I continued to use it, I got more and more interested in the fringe mods that promised to do things I hadn't even thought of. Until it happened again.

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I installed a mod, and then my 3ds wouldn't boot. I was crushed. After all that. Did I get too greedy? (yes) Was I in over my head? (certainly), Should a middle schooler have been attempting to install programs that could brick your system? (Not at all). But all hope was not lost. After going through reddit thread after reddit thread, I stumbled upon a thread on GBATemp, the holy mecca of nintendo modding forums, and I found somebody who had the same issue as I.

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And the author of the original mod had replied, and told them how to fix it. I went to follow the steps to recover. I booted up godmode9, and went into the hex-editor, with the mission of flipping 8 bits to recover my system. And I did. But that was what sparked my curiosity. I soon went to look up more information about hexadecimal, firmware, bootloaders, I even attempted to create my own software now that my system could run unsigned code (bad idea).

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Later on I went to jailbreak my ipod touch, and later my playstation. I was obsessed with squeezing every last bit out of the systems I owned because I wanted the freedom of being able to say this system is MINE. Mine to do with as I please.

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I eventually drifted out of the realms of cybersecurity and more into software development, as it was simpler (and considerably more legal). But I will always have my 3ds to thank for getting me interested in computer science, and the endless possibilities of the discipline.