so basically i lost my modded new 2ds xl and while i will probably find it at some point, i can’t control myself rn because i love it way too much. i have another original 2ds but it’s not modded so i want to mod it, but can i still use my pnid to post on juxt with that 2ds?
yeah, i know nnids can’t, but i’m not sure if pnids can
At the moment, you can link a PNID to multiple 3DS family consoles but this probably will change in the future. I’d recommend reading through the issue below on GitHub.
opened 12:22PM - 24 Jul 24 UTC
enhancement
approved
### Checked Existing
- [X] I have checked the repository for duplicate issues.
…
### What enhancement would you like to see?
This is a 2 part issue, which ties directly into #100:
1. Enforce PNIDs to be linked to consoles before letting them go online. This is only really relevant to the 3DS, as the Wii U already enforces this.
2. Actually link PNIDs to consoles on the backend just like Nintendo did.
## Part 1:
Enforcing a PNID to be linked to a console before going online has a few benefits, the biggest one being that it FORCES 3DS consoles to go through the NNID setup. This means we FORCE the 3DS to contact the NNAS server, which means we can:
- A) Ensure that a 3DS has an actual device certificate (not just the LFCS) tied to it.
- B) Actually tie a device to the device ID stored in said certificate.
Forcing a 3DS to link it's device certificate before going online means we always have access to it from the moment the user goes online. We plan to eventually completely change how bans are structured, and being able to simply directly ban the certificate would streamline things. Currently we still do support full console bans by using the LFCS, but being able to handle this as just device certificates would make things simpler when we transition the ban system. Currently the way console bans work is we lookup the console's records in our database and then set it's access level to `-1`. When we transition to a ban system where bans are stored as records in the database, being able to just store the device certificate hash in a ban record would simplify lookups (rather than trying to fumble around with checking both device certs and LFCS hashes).
Tying the device ID to the records in our database would also make some things easier in the admin panel. Currently @hauntii tries to use the device serial as the unique identifier, despite them being inherently untrustworthy (note that serials are not used for any actual checks besides sanity ones, since they are untrustworthy, Niko simply tries to use them as unique IDs).
Enforcing that a PNID be linked to a 3DS before going online would also give us an extra layer of tracking, especially when it comes to cheaters. For example if we find someone cheating in Mario Kart 7 we can see their PNID, and use that to cross reference who they are on a Wii U. If that Wii U has other accounts linked to it then we know to also monitor those accounts. Just as a basic example.
This brings things around to part 2.
## Part 2:
Linking users to single devices of each type has several benefits, but the biggest one comes down to preventing account sharing on supporter accounts. Right now we have a major issue with how supporters are handled on the 3DS; we manually whitelist people. This worked "fine" in the old days, but now that we cycle through several dozen supporters coming and going every day it's way too much to handle on our own. @DaniElectra does a great job adding people to the whitelist, but without someone also keeping up on removing people we end up in a situation where people support, get whitelisted, stop supporting, and stay whitelisted. We have known about this issue for years, but chose to not think much of it until now,
In order to prevent this, #100 was proposed. While this would fix the manual whitelisting issue, it introduces a new one (which isn't exactly new since this happens on the Wii U already); account sharing. By allowing PNIDs to exist on any number of consoles, it encourages account sharing especially in cases of supporter accounts. This can cause issues as we now have accounts tied to multiple consoles, and we can't actually know for certain who is who. If 1 account is linked to 2 consoles, and it keeps cheating, which console do we ban? That sort of thing.
In the case of supporter accounts it also encourages, essentially, account "piracy". People share the details to supporter accounts and then share those details publically. This becomes an issue as we rely on donations to stay operational, and just further adds fuel to the "who actually is this" issue. Additionally it also creates a scenario which we are seeing pretty often; people ***selling*** PNIDs. I know of at least 2 cases where someone has been directly profiting off of the mass sale of supporter PNIDs. This is, obviously, something we do not want to encourage. Not only for the already previously mentioned issues, but also because it creates an environment for users to get easily scammed.
By only allowing PNIDs to be linked to one of each console type, we prevent all these issues.
### Any other details to share? (OPTIONAL)
In order to do this properly we would need to throw the `0143` error on NNAS. This error, on the Wii U, throws the "The link to this Nintendo Network ID has been temporarily removed" error and unlinks the NNID from the local user account, forcing the user to sign in again and thus actually complete all the device detail filling and account linking.
This *does* mean that those who use Cemu as their primary medium would need to relink themselves using a real Wii U. I am aware that this may not be the case for everyone who uses Cemu, but that is unfortunately something I am willing to sacrifice in order to improve our own services and increase our security. Additionally, Cemu already has all the account information it needs to do the NNID/device linking process, so (while possibly not trivial) it is possible that Cemu could simply be updated to support this directly.
Additionally we would introduce a new issue that we would need to handle; manually unlinking PNIDs from consoles. This shouldn't be an issue from a technical perspective, but it is something people will request now (especially on the 3DS, since it doesn't have a "logout of NNID" button). We may be able to provide users the ability to unlink from their previously owned devices on the website however?
Also on the 3DS, I am unsure if `0143` from NNAS will have the same effect there. I remember testing some Wii U error codes on the 3DS a while ago and having slightly different results. This would need more testing.
2 Likes
I’m probably just gonna find my 2ds xl.