HackMii

Notes from inside your Wii

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Introducing: LetterBomb (the letter from heaven)

August 9th, 2011 by blasty · 126 Comments

Up until now the only way to liberate your Wii console and enable the use of homebrew with System Menu 4.3 was to use a gamedisc based exploit such as “BatHaxx”, “Return of the Jodi” and others.

Today we are announcing a project that changes this completely and removes the requirement for an exploitable game.

In memory of BannerBomb, we present you with LetterBomb , a brand new System Menu exploit that will allow you to enable homebrew with the push of an envelope 😉 (no stamp licking involved)

This exploit reuses (and abuses) some of some Nintendo’s Wii Messageboard functionality. 🙂

You will need:

  • A Wii running System Menu 4.3 (E/U/J/K)
  • A SD(HC) card with some free space
  • Your Wii’s WiFi MAC Address (available from your Wii’s system settings). This is needed because the Wii will only accept messages addressed to its specific MAC address.
  • A few minutes of your time

For this very special occasion we have created an easy-peasy webpage that takes away some of the pain that is usually involved with getting homebrew onto your system:

http://please.hackmii.com

This webpage will ask you for some necessary information (such as your System Menu region and MAC address), and  will then return a nicely packaged ZIP file that is ready for extraction to the root of your SD card. Simple eh?

All that is missing from that point is a boot.elf/boot.dol file (that you will need to place in the root of your card), and you should be good to go. For your convenience we have an option to prepackage and bundle the HackMii Installer boot.elf (this is enabled by default).

So, how do I do this?

Simple…. once you’ve unzipped the file to your SD card (and inserted it) just navigate to the “messageboard” on your Wii and in the default view you should browse to “yesterday” (the place where you usually see yesterday’s messages) – sometimes this may be “today” or “two days ago” (this depends on the timezone you are in).

From this view you will be presented with a small envelope (that should obviously stand out against the rest of your plain old boring ones), click it, kick back, twiddle your thumbs (the Brits among you, go and make a cup of tea) cross your fingers and hope it worked. 🙂

DISCLAIMER: We are aware of a similar exploit by giantpune (good work!), but as of today this has not been released. In anticipation of its release we decided to reverse engineer, hack and implement something ourselves.

Tags: Wii

126 responses so far ↓

  • 1 hacker331 // Mar 1, 2012 at 11:17 am

    i know morj2025 mine doesn’t show up either, maybe they fixed it?

  • 2 tueidj // Mar 1, 2012 at 11:18 pm

    morj2025: Make sure the wii’s date is set correctly.

  • 3 D337z // Mar 9, 2012 at 11:20 am

    @Michelinok: Do you have an older Wii? Like one that originally shipped with the Vers 2.x system menu?

  • 4 D337z // Mar 15, 2012 at 1:18 am

    I want to note there there has been an update that runs even after 4.3 system menu is installed. I believe it MAY block this exploit. Not certain, but the exploit doesn’t appear to work on a LU75 I’m working on.

  • 5 tueidj // Mar 15, 2012 at 6:27 am

    There have been no updates since September 2010.

  • 6 Legion6789 // Mar 17, 2012 at 4:35 pm

    Is this mac address issue ever going to be resolved? Is there a downloadable program that replicates what the website does?

  • 7 marcan // Mar 18, 2012 at 5:35 pm

    What MAC address issue? The website accepts all MAC OUIs currently assigned to Nintendo.

  • 8 11rcombs // Apr 8, 2012 at 6:02 pm

    Does this pack HBC 1.1.0 now? If not, could that be updated for convenience?

  • 9 D337z // May 1, 2012 at 11:20 pm

    Legion6789, try using WilBrand via ModMii. And marcan, though true that it does accept all MAC prefixes ASSIGNED to Nintendo, that is not the same as accepting all MAC prefixes that Nintendo uses. You see, when a company has more MAC addresses available than they need for a specific prefix, they may allow other companies to utilize the rest. It would appear that some early Wii systems took advantage of this and utilized a prefix or two that was listed for another company.

  • 10 tootiki // May 7, 2012 at 5:12 am

    Like morj2025, I have tried this but not seen a messag on the message board. My date and time are correct, though I’m using the Wii in a different time zone than when purchased. Will that make a difference?
    If not, how can I get this to work?

  • 11 zamber // Jul 20, 2012 at 3:09 pm

    I had HBC and daughter crashed it by clicking update. Do I need to get old HBC stuff off the wii before I start the LetterBomb process?

  • 12 fabiomcvnha // Aug 5, 2012 at 7:20 am

    O pĂĄgina http://please.hackmii.com

    estĂĄ fora do ar. alguem sabe quando vai voltar ou se hĂĄ outro site?

  • 13 Speed // Aug 5, 2012 at 10:34 am

    The please.hackmii.com site is down. I tried generating the files by pressing the blue (left) button, then the entire site simply went down and it’s inaccessible since then…

  • 14 samingtel // Aug 5, 2012 at 4:09 pm

    http://please.hackmii.com Down :/

  • 15 Ben // Aug 6, 2012 at 8:34 pm

    Yes.. website appears down. Wonder when they will fix this issue. Please admins look into the issue. Thanks!

  • 16 eminit // Aug 7, 2012 at 11:04 am

    Same problem as “Speed” I have been trying to go to the site since Aug 3rd and it has been down. Any news when it will be up?

  • 17 marcan // Aug 7, 2012 at 11:22 am

    Guys, calm down. We know it’s down. Shit happens, hardware dies. It’ll be back soon.

  • 18 mukram // Dec 5, 2012 at 5:20 pm

    I tried the letterbomb a few times and I can’t seem to to get it to work. The message is not coming up in the letter box. I used a san disk 4g do I need a 2g please help me.

  • 19 Artlover // Dec 7, 2012 at 9:49 am

    Regarding mac addresses. The simple fact is unless these guys are in contact with Nintendo techs and have been given a white list of MAC addresses being used by them, then they do not know what MAC addresses Nintendo is using.

    Sites like these:
    http://www.coffer.com/mac_find/
    http://standards.ieee.org/develop/regauth/oui/public.html
    Are NOT complete or definitive, and were never intended to be. These lists exist as a courtesy, with no guarantees, for people hoping to find information on their queries. These lists only contain publicly listed and known at the time OUI’s that have been entered into the publicly accessible database. They do not include hidden OUI’s (which all companies can request if they want), OUI’s that just haven’t been entered in the public DB yet, or OUI’s still in the pipeline of being processed.

    That first link (one marcan posted) hasn’t been updated in nearly 3 years shows only 30 listings for Nintendo. The second list shows 43. Neither list is complete. Half the network gear I have in my house (some of it old, some of it new) doesn’t show up on either of those lists. I’m talking Netgear, Linksys, Cisco, TPLink. So yeah, just because a MAC don’t appear in a public list somewhere doesn’t mean it’s not in use.

    There is no reason why they should be trying to protect the users from themselves by limiting what mac addresses can be entered. It serves no purpose because it won’t stop anyone from entering one of the last 3 pairs wrong anyways. So for all their efforts, it won’t stop people from entering a mac that won’t work for them. ALL it does is prevents many WII owners from not being able to use this exploit at all because these guys won’t accept Nintendo is using other MAC’s besides what is on these public lists.

  • 20 Artlover // Dec 7, 2012 at 9:50 am

    That said:

    Google “w11modder”.

    Standalone tool for PC’s that accepts ANY MAC address and generates a mailbomb package accordingly.

  • 21 LetterBomb (09-08-2011) (Wii misc) - News - Wii - PDRoms - Homebrew for you! // Dec 22, 2012 at 5:42 pm

    […] More information here: http://hackmii.com/2011/08/letterbomb/ […]

  • 22 skittletron // Jan 1, 2013 at 6:10 pm

    Is there ever going to be a support for LMB-RVL-WR/Z-C4 /RVL-036 remotes?…finding a old wii remote is harder than it looks…..lol… Hopefully somebody can make my 2013 year start a happy one….

  • 23 fockerme // Jan 1, 2013 at 9:05 pm

    Can’t get the .zip from site, getting the following error: “The exploit will only work if you enter your Wii’s MAC address.” Just bought new Black Wii and verified MAC is owned by Nintendo. Can the MAC DB be updated? 😀

  • 24 gravenfire45 // Dec 6, 2013 at 11:35 am

    does an adapter count as a sd card???

  • 25 thiz // Jan 15, 2014 at 2:13 pm

    Should you have an error (not seeing the red bomb), make sure the date and time is rightly set on your Wii… I hadn’t updated mine correctly, so obviously I didn’t see the red bomb letter… After configuring the date on the Wii, I found the letter immediately on the previous day as announced. From there everything worked like a charm.
    thanks !

  • 26 acrain92 // Oct 2, 2014 at 7:35 am

    i finally decide to soft-mod my wii cause my nes crapped out on me and now the letterbomb site is down lol

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