PSA: You Need To Update This 3DS Emulator To Avoid A Security Risk

Andy Walker / Android Authority

Nintendo 3DS emulation is better than ever thanks to the merging of Lime3DS and PabloMK7’s Citra forks into the new Azahar emulator, but if you have the emulator installed on your device you need to update it right away.

Previous versions of the app have the RPC server enabled by default, which can be useful for external game displays or integrations with streaming tools. However, it also poses a risk, since other devices on your local network can read from and write to the emulated application’s memory. There was no option to turn it off in settings.

This feature has existed since the days of Citra, but with all the updates made to the original code since it was shut down in the wake of the Yuzu case, new risks have emerged. PabloMK7 points specifically to “online functionality and account login support” and states that the team believes it’s “no longer ideal to have the RPC server enabled by default” in a post on Discord. Find the full text of the post below.

As a result, the team has released update 2121.2, which turns the RPC server off by default and adds a toggle to turn it back on. There are no known instances of the feature being used maliciously in the wild, but it’s worth updating right away. The update has a few other minor fixes across platforms, but nothing that will affect performance.

You can download the latest version from the official GitHub page for all platforms. The update has also been pushed to the Google Play Store version to make the process even easier on Android devices.

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