Interesting Xbox hacking article
Discussion
www.xbox-linux.org/wiki/17_Mistakes_Microsoft_Made_in_the_Xbox_Security_System
That is a fascinating (if you can understand it) look at how the original xbox was hacked to be allowed to run Linux and also copied games etc, written by some of the hackers.
What's the situation with the 360 - any such similar stuff coming soon?
That is a fascinating (if you can understand it) look at how the original xbox was hacked to be allowed to run Linux and also copied games etc, written by some of the hackers.
What's the situation with the 360 - any such similar stuff coming soon?
No no, it's a paper from back in 2005 that was "submitted to the 22nd Chaos Communication Congress, at the Berliner Congress Center, Berlin, Germany".
It's not so much about "how to hack xbox" (the information is very old and public now and the original xbox out of date now anyway so fairly irrelevant), but more "this is why we were able to hack something that is supposed to be secure" with the aim of raising general IT security issues.
Someone techy please back me up!
No joy killed
It's not so much about "how to hack xbox" (the information is very old and public now and the original xbox out of date now anyway so fairly irrelevant), but more "this is why we were able to hack something that is supposed to be secure" with the aim of raising general IT security issues.
Someone techy please back me up!
No joy killed
Edited by pentoman on Wednesday 3rd January 14:07
Not gonna tell you how or where to find the info, obviously, but it was my understanding the hitachi and samsung dvd drives in the xbox 360 have been 'hacked' and there are "do-it-yourself" kits available or coming out for said drives, but there has been some 'bricking' issues when the 360 updates are applied to hacked (and some not hacked) 360's.
pjskel said:
I'm sure MS learnt from it for the benefit of securing the 360 a lot more.
It would appear not.It seems backup games appeared on the 360 quicker than they did on the original Xbox.An update to the DVD drive and knowing the correct places to download is all you need to get your 360 games for the cost of a dual layer disc.
In fact when i read about how easily it was cracked, it made me wonder if MS didn't allow it on purpose just to sell more consoles lol.
the difference between te xbox acks and the 360 hacks is that at the moment the 360 can only accept complete games that have been unmodified, direct copies. This is because the hack on the 360 (a firmware upgrade of the disc drive) basically fools the drive in to thinking that dvd+r dl media is real. Once the drive has accepted its real then the rest of the machine accepts its real and only checks other anti piracy protocals. the actual game has encryption with a certain key on it therefore if you mess about with the actual game files the key wont match the modified game and hence wont play. This is why we cant as yet get home brew like xbmp on the box or modified games like an update of pro evo. This is also why there has been no bannings on xbox live as yet, MS thought it would go the way of te chip but as they left a gaping kink in there armour they dont seem to be able to detect modified firmware on the disc drive itself.
As for modification, recently an unnamed hacker has used the demo of king kong to boot up some homebrew which was basically a bouncing box saying "linux and osx coming soon". this is becaus a while back a disk was released from a kiosk that could be copied and played on an 360 without and hacking whatsoever. in the game king kong there were some shaders left unsigned. Eithers he has used them to hack in to the rest of the box or more likly he programmed them to display the image mentioned above.
hope that helps. its all off memmory so details might be slightly wrong
As for modification, recently an unnamed hacker has used the demo of king kong to boot up some homebrew which was basically a bouncing box saying "linux and osx coming soon". this is becaus a while back a disk was released from a kiosk that could be copied and played on an 360 without and hacking whatsoever. in the game king kong there were some shaders left unsigned. Eithers he has used them to hack in to the rest of the box or more likly he programmed them to display the image mentioned above.
hope that helps. its all off memmory so details might be slightly wrong
tbops said:
As for modification, recently an unnamed hacker has used the demo of king kong to boot up some homebrew which was basically a bouncing box saying "linux and osx coming soon". this is becaus a while back a disk was released from a kiosk that could be copied and played on an 360 without and hacking whatsoever. in the game king kong there were some shaders left unsigned. Eithers he has used them to hack in to the rest of the box or more likly he programmed them to display the image mentioned above.
Quite possibly he's going to make the security system think "I'm running King Kong" when it's actually sat trying to get a keyboard working. I must admit, going in via an unsigned shader would be an interesting attack vector.
Personally the "playing pirated games" aspect of hacking the Xboxes hasn't ever interested me, it's much more the making the hardware do what YOU want that's got me.
tbh dont think hes done it but id like to be proven wrong. The origanal xbox is a brilliant media centre once modded and xbmc loaded on to it. i watch all my films thru it streaming off the comuter. i watch football over the net thru it also. If the new xbox were to be hacked i could get the bugger to do hd too!
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