TASBot is an augmented Nintendo R.O.B. robot that can play video games without any of the button mashing limitations us humans have. By pretending to be a controller connected to a game console, TASBot triggers glitches and exploits weaknesses to execute arbitrary opcodes and rewrite games. This talk will explore the idea that breaking video games using Tool-Assisted emulators can be a fun way to learn the basics of discovering security vulnerabilities, finishing by connecting an SNES directly to the internet and allowing the audience to interact with it. An overview of some of the details that will be described in the talk can be found in an article I coauthored for the PoC||GTFO journal (Issue 0x10, Pokemon Plays Twitch, page 6).
Allan Cecil (dwangoAC) is the President of the North Bay Linux User's Group (http://NBLUG.org). He acts as an ambassador for TASVideos.org, a website devoted to using emulators to complete video games as quickly as the hardware allows. He participates in Games Done Quick (http://gamesdonequick.com) charity speedrunning marathons using TASBot to entertain viewers with never-before-seen glitches in games. By day, he is a senior engineer at Ciena Corporation working on OpenStack Network Functions Virtualization orchestration and Linux packet performance optimization testing.