Great now people won’t pay for games anymore.

Grady: read the last paragraph. The hack should be considered a proof-of-concept. It is not fit for mass-production, it’s not undetectable, it will get you kicked out of Xbox Live, it will only function for a limited time, it requires a $1000 hardware writer to execute.

Imho people will still be paying for some time

Also, the small fact that it is not released to the general public may be a small obstruction to widespread acceptation.

Well i don’t believe it’s real, because their was such a video for the Gamecube (same style) and it was a fake, the Gamecube was connected on the front (like this 360) and another was connected on the backside of the TV, this second GC had an original gamedisc. So i don’t believe it.

Wow why do nerds have to always blow sh1t well i do agree with GerDirk0 i believe its fake to cuz i saw that video also.So lets pray that it is if not microsoft will find them nerds and well we can just say bye bye.

i believe that it is real, but that these hackers have far too much integrity to release it to the scene. however, now that proof of concept has been provided, it will not be long before another hacker devotes enough time into cracking this nut.
and curry, i believe it was stated with some conviction in this last thread that this would be very difficult for m$ to detect, and more likely they will include a firmware update with every live update. however, it was also theorized that it would be easy to remove the dvd drive from the 360, drop it into a pc and reflash the hacked firmware. that certainly sounds plausible.
and since m$ doesn’t really make money on game sales, just licensing essentially, i wouldn’t be completely surprised if they left this very obvious door open to increase console sales. to be sure, the game for m$ is to be the first with ten million consoles out the door. however they can do it…

– mu

I think some people have too much time on there hands…

Trigger Man,
some people seriously get off on the satisfaction of figuring something out that has been deemed impossible.

TheSpecialist and co have no reason to release a fake video now, they got a lot of credit for their Xbox 1 hacks, and the technical explanations for the current hack are all there and they work out according to my technical knowledge, which is less than theirs but I can understand most of their writings on those forums

“and curry, i believe it was stated with some conviction in this last thread that this would be very difficult for m$ to detect”

I never said it was possible to detect in the article, and my 3rd comment was slightly over the top to make the point.

I do think it’s detectable though if Microsoft releases a dashboard update which triggers the challenge/response mechanisms differently, and the drive would respond erroneously to that. You would be able to circumvent that by installing a new hacked firmware prior to installing the update. I’m not sure about this though.

Easiest for MS would actually be to simply flash the DVD firmware on every system bootup, or just once every week. They should be able to do that from the kernel as far as I know, and it would simply eliminate any threat from this hack.

curry said
“I never said it was possible to detect ” ???

“it’s not undetectable.”

that is your quote. and you said it will get you banned from live, and several other very very misleading and incorrect statements… why? what is “the point” as you put it?

– mu

I didn’t say it in the article In the comments (2nd actually, not 3rd) I overstated some things to make the point that using this firmware will cause you a lot of shit. I will correct the list for you though:

It is not fit for mass-production, it may not be undetectable, it might get you kicked out of Xbox Live, it will only function for a limited time, it requires a damn expensive hardware writer to execute.

Happy?

hmm

Curry, I did read the last paragraph. I was being sarcastic if you didn’t notice. I sure hope that a lot of people don’t rip off publishers like they did last generation and from the way that you put it, it seems like that won’t be the case. Thanks for the info! =)

Just because you see the cable going in to front of a TV doesn’t mean there is none going in the back.The “Glass Is Half Full” In this video. It proves absolutely nothing and is not a “proof”. I could easily have 2 360’s and take the top off one and have it wired to the front of my 67″ showing you my direct connection on a video through the front but still have yet another 360 plugged in to the back and have myself, or wow I got a friend, boot the other 360 same time. Oooooh it gets better (and less expensive to deceive and only have 1 360…. I can take a real copy of (insert game here) put a blank CD label (oooooh its plain white) and write the games name on it. Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
I demand real proof. This is not proof of concept.

I demand you shut the fuck up, quickly.
I don’t knopw much about modding and hacking, but it looks pretty legit to me.

Whow Triggerman, you have quit political discussion capabilities!

It’s legit if one reads the forum from xboxhacker.net, but on the other hand some people will never be convinced until it runs on their own console.

But I must say that King Trigger man demands that non believers should shut the f*ck up, so we don’t hear nobody saying anymore that it’s not real

Whata re you on about? I was taking the piss the way he said he demands ‘real proof’, I never said anything about non-believers, did I?

Well like I said, the video combined with the technical info they’ve been giving on the forums is proof enough for me. The video alone would’ve been doubtful indeed.

And Grady: sorry I didn’t get enough sleep last week

I’m not saying they didn’t crack the firmware, I’m saying that video is hardly “Proof”

Indeed the info on there site is interesting but once again you could easily fake that same exact video with only one console. I have never seen an all white DVD-r. Well I take that back, I have made them with blank labels.

Just because someone gives a great deal of tech info and then demonstrates something doesn’t mean anything. It would have been more believable if the CD said Sony DVD-r on it or at least a brand name and not a blank CD label as well as going around the TV to show no other console wires were present.

TRIGGER M4N on the other hand is obviously a naive little boy that will believe anything he is shown, I can’t blame him though that’s how the educational system has raised most people in the US. One day he will learn not to believe everything he reads.

Lets see what this means for the consumers if it is real. People will pirate about 20% or much more of games and publishers and developers will lose interest in making games for the console. GG

he hack is a modified firmware of the Xbox 360 Hitachi-LG GDR-3120L DVD-ROM drive (the security in the Toshiba/Samsung TS-H943 is said to be similar, so it’s probably also possible with this drive … but it does require it’s own hacked firmware of course).
As you (should) know, all Xbox 360 executables (XEX files) are signed by Microsoft (with a private key only MS has). This means that if you try to change anything to the XEX file, the signature will be wrong and the file will not boot.
Now … to protect from booting an exact copy of a game from a DVD-R or other recordable media, microsoft gave each XEX file a ‘mediaflag’. This mediaflag tells the Xbox 360 from which media (cd-r, dvd-r, dvd+r, dvd-rw, hdd, dvdxbox, dvdxbox360, …) the XEX is allowed to boot. Changing this mediaflag in the XEX header is not an option as it’ll break the signature of the file (see above), so … what’s done in this firmware hack is ‘break’ the detection of the disc.
Retail games usually get a mediaflag where they only allow ‘dvdxbox360′ (Xbox 360 discs - different than a normal DVD because it has some specific bad sectors and special info in lead-in/out that can’t be written with a standard dvd burner). The modified firmware will trick the DVD drive into reporting a DVD-R (or other) as a DVDXBOX360 to the Xbox 360.

How can you do this?
Well, right now you can’t. The firmware has not been released to the public because it would mostly be used for piracy and that’s not what this team wants (unlike the original Xbox hack this can’t be used (atleast not directly) for homebrew and linux fun). But the research done by these guys is public as you can read their discussions of the last few months on the xboxhacker.net forums, so people with good assembly experience should be able to duplicate this hack.

From xbox-scene, just like the above:

If the firmware was released, what would it mean?
Right now the Xbox 360 DVD firmware can’t be flashed via PC (and for us, end-users, even less directly by the Xbox 360 itself (Microsoft could probably flash the drive from Xbox360 tho)), because there’s no software to do this. Of course, drivers and flashing software for Xbox360 DVD drives could probably be written (and some people have been working on this), but so far this has not been done (atleast not publicly).
So, that means you’d have to open your Xbox 360, open your DVD drive and desolder the chip where the firmware is stored on.
Each Xbox 360 DVD drive has a unique key, if that key doesn’t match what your console is expecting your DVD drive will not work.
So next you will need to read your current firmware chip with special hardware (flash programmer), to find your unique DVD 16 byte key (stored at 0×4F00). Then you’ll have to insert this key in the modified firmware (or patch your original firmware) and program this modified firmware back on the firmware chip. Then put the firmware chip back in the drive, close DVD drive and Xbox 360 and I guess you’re done.
As said above the hack would allow you to run MS-signed and unmodified XEX files only, so that also means the game must be of right region (as changing the regionflag in the XEX header would break the signature). Unsigned, homebrew executables would of course not work, again because signature check would fail.

Mutagen, are you stupid? Microsoft loses quite a bit of money when they sell somebody a console. They make their money through accessories and games.

sierraalpho,

actually, if you notice there are very few games released by m$ (first party titles). most games come from independant developers that then have to pay licensing fees to m$. from what i have read, that is their bread and butter so to speak. it is the developers that take the loss on the individual game sales.

– mu

[…] After all the confusion of the last week over the Xbox 360 DVD firmware hack, people started launching the wildest theories on the internet about the implications of what has been achieved. The problem was mainly one of proof and solid information: there was only a video and huge heaps of incomprehensible technical mumbojumbo to work from, nothing the lesser gods amongst us could actually get a solid grip on. Xboxic met up with Robinsod, one of the 6 hackers that worked for months to perform the hack, to sort out once and for all what has been done and what it means for the Xbox 360, and all of this in understandable language anyone with some basic technical insight should mostly be able to understand. […]

I’m glad this isn’t being released. I mean, I hate windows as much as the next guy but Microsoft has really given us a fantastic peice of gaming hardware and we should support Microsoft when they get something RIGHT.

jonny13

Funny to see this thread brought back up considering how fully hacked all models of the 360 DVD drives are now 10 months later and how easily you can download the firmware and tools for it.

You hear about (Key) issues when installing new TS-H943 Drive.
You ask but get no where when trying to findout what this is where it is located must be protected by goverment ?
Ask Microsoft to get no response I have 360 my drive needs replacemnet want to do this but by time seems get this answer it will better to put money away and buy a new system