A security researcher has partially jailbroken the Switch 2 using software alone, and the way in is a programming app built for the original Switch.
Sammy Hajhamid says the hack gives "userland" access, meaning the level where ordinary programs run, short of full control of the system. In his words, it "lets us run homebrew, reverse engineer and mod Switch 2 games, back up save files off the Switch, and access most of the Switch 2's peripherals through MMIO." Homebrew is unofficial, user-made software. MMIO, or memory-mapped input/output, is a way for code to talk to hardware by reading and writing specific memory addresses.
The entry point is the original Switch version of SmileBasic 4, a programming environment and interpreter. Removing items from an array in SmileBasic triggers a 32-bit integer overflow, a math error where a number outgrows the space reserved for it. That error exposes an array pointer, which gives read and write access to portions of system memory.
The hack is "tethered." It needs a macOS or Linux PC on the same network running a node.js package that helps enable privileged access.
Hajhamid wrote that he used OpenAI's Codex to probe the interpreter. He built a custom harness that sent USB commands to the console, read results over HDMI, and power cycled the system with a Bluetooth light-switch-flipping device. After "substantial effort for ~2 weeks," the harness found the overflow.
Two things stand out. First, the weak spot is not new Switch 2 code but an older app the console runs, which suggests backward compatibility widens the attack surface. Interpreters are natural targets because they run outside code and handle memory directly. Second, the AI was only one piece. The write-up describes a physical rig and about two weeks of grinding, so the hard part looks like the setup, not a machine spotting bugs unaided.
The limits are real: partial access, a helper PC, and a bug tied to one app. The source does not say whether Nintendo can fix it, or whether a patch would mean changing the system or the game.