Hacking the Xbox

minuszero writes "BBC News is reporting that the hacker community has already begun to crack the Xbox 360 system. From the article: 'A group of crackers called Team PI Coder says it has discovered the basic workings of the console's file system. The information has helped the group dig out the raw data from the console for 13 Xbox 360 games.'" Relatedly, Mancomb Seepgood writes "Xbox-Linux have published a new paper 17 Mistakes Microsoft Made in the Xbox Security System, which will be presented at the 22nd Chaos Communication Congress in Germany. It details the history of efforts to crack the Xbox and highlights a number of mistakes Microsoft made, including not understanding basic cryptographic algorithms or reading Intel's CPU datasheets." This latter article focuses on the original console.

BS

[Is0m0rph]

They didn't discover anything. They just repacked other people's work from the old Xbox extractors. The author of Qwix has stated that Qwix (Xbox unpacker that's been out for a long time) will unpack a 360 iso with no changes other than renaming the 360 image file to .iso.

Cheap

[Threni]

> The Xbox is supposed to find out the highest clock speed the RAM chips can go
> and run them at this frequency - this is the reason why some games don't run as
> smoothly on some Xboxes as on others.

Sounds like a good way of getting your money back, in the UK at least - if you see a demonstration Xbox on demo in a shop, and find that the one you bought isn't the same then you've been misled and can get a full refund from the retailer.

It's also just a shitty thing to do. Does the Xbox2 also pull this trick?

Hmmmm

[Sv-Manowar]

Why is this news to some people? I can't see any reason to not expect this. As long as the curiousity is there, and there is a market for pirate (cheaper) games there will always be people willing to crack the console, and the earlier they can do it the more money (or fun, depending on their reasons for doing it) they can have/make.

Microsoft can write all the protection they want into their consoles in the time they develop them, but at the end of the day as soon as it changes hands.. someone has 24 hours a day all day to do what they like to try and crack it. Unlike a salaried coder at MS, they probably have a lot more motivation to do it as well. Just a thought.

I'll be happy if they do fully crack the 360...

[PhotoBoy]

... because I modded my Xbox and put a bigger hard drive in there and it's been one of the best console setups I've ever had. I can install all my games to the hard drive, reset to the menu system via the joypad, FTP files to the Xbox and watch divx/xvid and DVDs in 720p or 1080i.

Before anyone reminds me about the evils of piracy, I do buy all my games, it's just the convenience of not having to keep all my game discs around if on a whim I decide to play one I've not played in a while. I can just turn it on, browse the list and pick whatever takes my fancy. It saves on disc scratching too. In fact the only drawback is that when the hard disk dies (which I had happen a few days ago) you have to spend a few hours loading your games back onto a new drive.

So I eagerly await a mod chip for the 360 that allows me to replace the removable HD with something bigger and to allow me to run imported games from any region, to install my games to the hard disk, play any region DVDs and watch non DRM'ed movie files. I can't wait!