Nintendo Switch 2 Hacked, Emulator Built, and Files From FromSoftware’s The Duskbloods Under Analysis

A Caltech student and security researcher who goes by pepsipu says they used artificial intelligence to hack the Nintendo Switch 2. It is not a full kernel-level exploit. It is a “tethered jailbreak,” which stays active only until the device is rebooted.

Using this firmware 23.0.1 bypass, pepsipu modified Mario Kart World and made backups of save data. Nintendo soon responded to the post and pulled the app in which the vulnerability was found from its store.

Other tech enthusiasts have already started their own work. NERS said a dump of Deltarune for Nintendo Switch 2 (chapters 1 through 4) has been obtained. There are also reports that 3D models have been extracted from Mario Kart World, and enthusiasts are examining beta materials for The Duskbloods, a new game from FromSoftware that is a Switch 2 exclusive.

Image source: Nintendo

A repository for a project called “ounce-core” has also appeared on GitHub. Its developer, hffgzktbcc-blip, describes it as a Nintendo Switch 2 engine emulator written in Rust. According to the developer, it can run unmodified native 64-bit files and captured machine code from dumps of the official 23.0.1 firmware.

The repository does not include system files, which avoids copyright claims. Nobody has publicly released Nintendo Switch 2 game ROMs yet.