FBI updated to 2.6.0, adds TLS 1.2 support

FBI updated to 2.6.0, adds TLS 1.2 support

January 3rd, 2019, 17:15 Posted By: wraggster

Stevice10's homebrew app FBI, the popular title installer for the 3DS, just received an update. With it, TLS v1.2 support was added to the application, making it possible to download files from websites that no longer support older versions of the standards—a significant issue for many apps when GitHub announced it would only support the aforementioned specification from February of last year. On a more minor note, support for TitleDB, a way for users to download and install homebrew directly to their console, has been removed after the service was discontinued for unknown reasons last month.

While many were sad to see TitleDB go, TLS v1.2 support should be a welcome addition, restoring all available remote installation functions for many projects hosted on GitHub. Download speeds will be slower than usual when downloading from a website that doesn't support the older standards as FBI will use its own network stack instead of the one provided by Nintendo, however it will fall back to it whenever possible as it will provide better download speeds. Faster downloads for TLS v1.2 websites may come in the future as the author stated he's looking into what's causing the issue.

It should be noted that in order to install this update you must do so manually as the built-in update function is broken due to the old TitleDB servers being down.

You can find the full changelog below:

Remove TitleDB support.
Add TLSv1.2 support.
- In testing, speeds were ~70-80kbps, which should be good enough for homebrew downloads.
  - I hope to investigate the matter further and improve speeds in the future, but wanted to finally get something out for the time being.
- Downloads from sources that support earlier TLS versions (i.e. not GitHub) will continue to use the 3DS's built-in HTTP stack, and thus should progress at the same speeds as before.
Revert the built-in updater back to using GitHub.