In a noteworthy development, Cybercriminals Successfully Manage to Coerce Nintendo's Alarmo into Running Doom
In a noteworthy development, Cybercriminals Successfully Manage to Coerce Nintendo's Alarmo into Running Doom
The Nintendo Clock-Gadget is simply a 2.8-inch round screen encased in a substantial, vibrant red circular gadget. Its size and design made it an alluring challenge for tech enthusiasts aiming to make the $100 alarm clock obey their commands. The initial objective for these enthusiasts was, unsurprisingly, to get it to run the infamous game, Doom. Regrettably, it hasn't evolved to disturb your sleep every time you annihilate a demon, at least not as of now.
An adept reverse engineer and YouTube personality known as GaryOderNichts managed to demonstrate the Nintendo Clock-Gadget running Doom without requiring any hardware modifications. He shared this feat through his YouTube and Twitter accounts over the weekend. The controlling mechanism uses the rotating wheel at the top of the gadget for aiming and movement, while the two side buttons serve to fire weapons. The ingenious hardware hacker presented the guidelines and code on their GitHub, making it convenient for others to achieve the same result.
Sadly, due to certain "USB loader memory size restrictions," there's no audio present in the demonstration. However, it's feasible to add sound if one uses a full USB load of Doom without modifying the gadget. But doing so would undermine the overall impact. Instead, Alarmo is currently running a version of Chocolate Doom, the portable adaptation of the 1993 iconic shooter game.
Ever since its release in October, tech enthusiasts have been dissecting the Alarmo. Gary acknowledged the contributions of a fellow hardware hacker and Twitter user, Spinda, who was among the earliest to perform a teardown and reveal how one could connect external devices like the Flipper Zero to the Alarmo's board to gain access to its internal memory.
Gary has spent the past few weeks working tirelessly on reverse-engineering Alarmo. In a post on their blog, they detailed the process of connecting wires to the SWD pins on a Raspberry Pi to read the board’s registers. The Alarmo employs an STM32H7 MCU, which Gary acknowledged as a great advantage due to the wealth of free example code available online.
In summary, Gary successfully bypassed the security measures on the device, allowing the USB mode and the single USB-C port to execute a custom firmware update. This means users can now run custom coding on the device without even opening it. The latest software version is 2.0, and it still functions normally.
Gary also showed the clock displaying an image of a cat, and it's possible to incorporate animated visuals too, such as a fluorescent tube effect. Regrettably, this doesn't grant the ability to manipulate the Nintendo Alarmo's base software for unconventional purposes, like having Kratos from God of War shout "wake up, boy" every morning. Nintendo may soon update the system to prevent further misadventures. For now, this is merely the beginning of the technically possible exploits.
It may not be the Switch 2, but the Alarmo serves as a welcome diversion until Nintendo eventually reveals their next console in action next year.
The demonstration of Doom on the Nintendo Clock-Gadget showcases the potential of future technology in reimagining vintage games on unexpected devices. With advancements in hardware hacking and reverse engineering, we might witness more unexpected integrations of tech and gaming in the near future.