Wii U: user accesses MiiVerse admin boards, Nintendo responds
Wii U launched across America at the weekend, and a gamer has already found a rather significant security flaw in Nintendo's MiiVerse service, giving him admin access to social post threads, and unearthing what was presumed to be threads dedicated to unannounced Wii U titles. Nintendo has since stepped in to claim the content was merely a mock-up. Judge for yourself below.
The discovery was made by a NeoGAF user named Trike who claimed he accessed the MiiVerse debug panel by pressing the, "X" button on the gamepad while hovering over the exit button."
In doing so Trike found himself in the MiiVerse back-end, letting him see pages of comments, user accounts and discussion threads. Among those found were threads titled, 'Yoshi Land Wii U', 'Metal Gear Solid' and 'Resident Evil'. Some sites reported these as supposed games, but Nintendo has since stepped in and called them nothing more than mock-ups.
In a statement to GI.biz, Nintendo attempted to clarify the matter, "It has come to our attention that some people were able to access a mock up menu on Miiverse following the launch of Wii U in the US. Please note that this was only a mock up menu and has now been removed and is not accessible."
The statement made Trike's access seem trivial, however he also explained that he was given full admin privileges over MiiVerse social posts, which is both potentially disruptive and slightly worrying.
"I thought they were real when I found them," he said, "because they were posted 20 minutes ago from the time I accessed them. I could flag them for prohibited content, spoilers, and something else that I forget. Then I went to a different link on the debug menu and it showed three different Miiverse subforums I could access that would be coming out on December 20th.
"There were even more subforums for games specifically, including Yoshi's Island Wii U and Soul Hackers, and less specific ones like "Metal Gear Solid" and "Resident Evils". By the time I stopped posting on gaf to check for more it was fixed, and someone pointed out that Nintendo put up a tweet about a miiverse fix."
Such a lapse in security just days after launch doesn't bode well for Nintendo, and casts early doubt over the Wii U's attempts to tap into the online mind-set long adopted by rivals Microsoft and Sony.
Does Nintendo have the chops to tussle with PS3 and Xbox 360's online features? Let us know what you think below.
Check out more of Trike's shots below.