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Wii U SDBoot1 Exploit “paid the beak”
Preface: I am going to speak mostly in regards to my hand in this as I don’t have solid understanding of the Wii U software and architecture and I don’t want to throw out incorrect information. Where needed I have provided quotes and screenshots so that the information provided is coming straight from the horses mouth.
The last 25% of the Memory Cards required some sort of soldering or rework to recover the data, most of them being that the PCB was damaged and the flash IC needed to be placed on a good working board. In short, SDBoot1 is a function that is used in the factory for initial software setup and for servicing the console and Rairii quickly found a vulnerability in it that would allow us to run our own code at boot. A couple benefits to using the 08M2 series PICAXE chips are that the 08M2LE variant can be bought for as cheap as $1.12 USD, only needs just three supporting components, and a really small footprint when compared to a RP2040.
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