Considered to be one of the most successful game consoles of all time, Nintendo Wii seems to be invulnerable, until now. According to The Register, security researchers Michael Steil and Felix Domke had successfully hacked the Nintendo Wii gaming console during a presentation at the 24th Chaos Communication Congress held last week.

In the presentation, the two demonstrated that it was possible to run unofficial code on the console, though access to system resources and support for hardware was limited. The presentation highlights and proves the possiblity to create countless homebrew applications and games for Wii.

The hack requires extracting keys for signing Wii code, which becomes possible due to Nintendo’s use of an unencrypted drive. So far, no news of the hack being exploited has been reported in the wild, and the gaming company may be expected to retaliate by providing a patch, or voiding support for compromised systems.

Currently, the Nintendo Wii system requires manually installing modchips if one wishes to run custom code, though the code would only be restricted to Nintendo Game Cube functionality. This is due to backward support offered by Wii to the Game Cube. Vulnerabilities in the Wii’s flash player also exists, though some have been already patched by the vendor.

Further exploration of this latest hack may soon expand the Wii’s capability to make full use of the Wii’s functionality. This means a myriad of possibilities for developers, software creators and even malware authors — so let the games begin….

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