A Switch 2 jailbreak was built with help from OpenAI's Codex
Security researcher Sammy Hajhamid says the AI agent found the bug that opened up the console. It's software-only and doesn't survive a restart.
Security researcher Sammy Hajhamid, known online as pepsipu, says he has jailbroken the Nintendo Switch 2 with help from OpenAI's Codex coding agent. The Verge and XDA reported it on 22 October.
In his blog post, as reported by XDA, he set up a rig so Codex could work the Switch 1 and Switch 2 itself: it sent controller inputs over USB, watched the video output over HDMI, and used a Bluetooth light switch flicker to press the power button when the console crashed. Codex first tried the console's web browser without success, then found an integer overflow in SmileBASIC 4, a game-making app on the eShop.
The jailbreak works on the latest firmware, 23.0.1. It's tethered, which The Verge says means it has to be run from a game every time the console is turned on, and XDA says it isn't a full kernel-level exploit. Hajhamid says it still took "substantial effort" over two weeks.
To show it working, he posted a modded Mario Kart World with Peter Griffin, Hatsune Miku, Cinnamoroll and an Angry Bird as racers. He says those mods were vibe-coded in a day. Nintendo hasn't commented.