Almost half a year after taking Wii U servers offline, Nintendo is letting fans play their multiplayer games online again. The news comes five months after Nintendo removed online play for Mario Kart 8 and Splatoon following the discovery of critical vulnerabilities in both games.
At the time, Nintendo only said the takedown was for “extended maintenance” and didn’t mention the vulnerability issue. Dataminer OatmealDome originally suggested the problem stemmed from an ENLBufferPwn exploit, a critical problem that affected multiple Nintendo first-party games, including Animal Crossing New Horizons and even Splatoon 3, along with older games on the Wii U and Nintendo 3DS.
Starting on 8/2, we will be resuming online play for the Wii U games Splatoon and Mario Kart 8. We appreciate your patience during the extended wait.
Learn more: https://t.co/Q9YJAakEvO
— Nintendo of America (@NintendoAmerica) August 2, 2023
ENLBufferPwn lets the hacker execute code in your console just by playing an online game with you. The result could give the hacker control over your game or the entire console, which is particularly problematic given the sensitive financial and personal information that may be on there.
A group of software-savvy dataminers pointed out the problem to Nintendo in 2021, and since then, the Big N has issued patches for a wide range of its games to fix the vulnerability. It’s unclear why Mario Kart 8 and Splatoon had to remain offline for so long, but whatever the case, it’s fixed – for now.
In Nintendo’s statement on the matter, the company said they may have to disable online functionality again at short notice if further problems arise.
Written by Josh Broadwell on behalf of GLHF
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