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XBox (Games) Entertainment Games

Two Xbox Anti-Hacking Patents Published? 14

Posted by simoniker from the filing-for-no-defiling dept.
theodp writes "The USPTO published two interesting patent applications late last week, both apparently from Microsoft. Architecture for manufacturing authenticatable gaming systems is designed 'to prevent hackers from easily obtaining valid credentials for purposes of cheating or other improper uses'. This is done by placing pre-established secrets on game systems during console manufacturing. Network architecture for secure communications between two console-based gaming systems establishes links using secrets derived from authentic game consoles running authentic game titles." These were both originally filed back in late 2001, but is this just convoluted syntax for what the Xbox already does, or is anything interesting going on here?
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Two Xbox Anti-Hacking Patents Published? More

Two Xbox Anti-Hacking Patents Published?

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  • This sounds a bit like the intel chip ID. I bet MS end up using this to trace back pirated copies rather than to crack down on cheating...

  • another set of dumb patents? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by hectorh ( 113198 ) on Monday May 19, 2003 @12:21AM (#5989630) Homepage
    Wow, talk about two patents that are close to other existing technologies.

    For example, there is the Zero-Knowledge-Test (ZKT) used for authenticating peers without actually transmitting a shared secret.

    And a "Network architecture for secure communications between two console-based gaming systems"??? Haven't they ever heard of the SSH or SSL protocols?

    What a waste of time and effort. Why would they bother to file this patents?

    Are patents useless in the software world? I mean, as a programmer, I know that there is more than one way to solve a problem, so what kind of protection do you get with a software patent?

    • Jesus you didn't even bother reading the patents did you?

      Your basing you comments on the title of the patents alone. Talk about a waste of time and effort.

      You know what, I seem to always end up posting on these patent articles, after speading half and hour reading the patents, explaining in a paragraph to people who obviously don't care, what the patent is truly about.

      but i'm not going to do it this time. i'm too tired, and in the end, who cares. Your wrong, you didn't read'm, they are nothing like SSH/S
  • Perhaps they have decided that its easier to just patent everything (since they will be given whatever ridiculous patent they want), which for them is an insignificant ammount of money anyway.

    They can then:
    1) Find some way of applying the patents, perhaps a lawsuit against some company which will not be able to afford fighting MS ( regardless of the validity of the lawsuit )
    2) Prevent someone from suing them ?
    3) ????
    4) Umm they don't need any more do they ?
  • Many...big....words

  • So... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Goldberg's Pants ( 139800 )
    The cheats thing... How the hell does that work? The wording implies something as mundane as game cheats! As in L-R-U-D-R2 type things...

    Xbox is appealing due to it's hard drive, but it seems MS are hellbent on preventing people from doing what they want with the hardware they paid good money for.

    Of course, this is Microsoft, so hardly a surprise...

  • Sorry, but I don't see any evil motives or anything here. Preventing cheating in multiplayer games (and this is what the patents are about) is a damn good thing, and the patents actually talk about encrypted network communication and SystemID/key pairs which are stored on their central servers for authentication. Together with their EXE signatures this is a quite good protection as it prevents messing around with the game code. Of course you can build your own custom hardware to patch the game in memory aft
    • Sorry, but I don't see any evil motives or anything here.

      The motives for applying the technology are good. Cheating in multiplayer games is a huge problem, and it's good that they're doing what they can to prevent it. However, applying for a patent on that technology amounts to yet another in a huge list of USPTO giving out patents to unworthy companies for old tech.

  • Is this really patentable? The concept of secure communications between two networked devices have been around for years. Just because it's a "console" doesn't mean that its "novel" enough because a network adapter was added to it.

    Neither the S/Key method described, nor the networked technologies described are anything "innovative" that Microsoft came up with. Certainly secured encryption is important to prevent cheating but this sounds like Microsoft is trying to claim exclusive rights to a concept tha

    • Is this really patentable? The concept of secure communications between two networked devices have been around for years.

      I think there's a huge misconception on slashdot about what a patent is, exactly. You cannot patent a general concept. What you patent is a specific method of doing something. For example, there are several hundred patents issued for different types of can-openers. Obviously, the concept of opening a can has been around since cans were invented. But, not surprisingly the methods used

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