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→Tips and info: Little note about what XN means for people wondering why there are no public exploits yet.
What this means is if any exploits are found, it would be very difficult to do anything useful with them. Work is currently being done to find out how the 3DS ticks and to aid in finding exploits. See the [[#Current efforts | current efforts]] section of this page for examples and more information.
What this means is if any exploits are found, it would be very difficult to do anything useful with them. Work is currently being done to find out how the 3DS ticks and to aid in finding exploits. See the [[#Current efforts | current efforts]] section of this page for examples and more information.
The 3DS uses the XN feature of the ARM processor, and only apps that have the necessary permissions in their headers can set memory to be executable. This means that although a usable buffer overflow exploit would still be useful, it would not go the entire way towards allowing code to be run in an easy/practical fashion (ie an actual homebrew launcher) - for that, an exploit in the kernel would probably need to be found. A buffer overflow exploit does, however, provide enough wriggle room through the use of return-oriented programming to potentially trigger a kernel exploit if and when a useful one is found.