XBox 360 = CRACKED

[Albaholic]

While 360 hasnt been cracked yet, this is one small step to getting there

 

[Vrykyl]

or at least getting linux and more usefull mods on it

 

[LoneWolf121188]

That took...three weeks

Honestly, I'm surprised it took them this long to get only this far. I mean, modchips for the original xbox were released in like less than a month, right? Heck, XP was cracked before it even came out!

Question: if the raw data can be extracted, can't they then make exact copies of the disks, essentially bypassing the copy protection?

 

[SuperFarStucker]

The xbox 360 will never be cracked in any meaningful way.

http://games.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=171046&cid=14247487

Don't think it will be that easy, Microsoft has learned from their previous XB1 security blunder - and this time they do not even trust data running on the internal hardware bus.
Executable data is hashed and signed using asymmetrical keys built into the different hardware components (gpu, cpu etc). As each console has different keys "burned in", compromising one machine will mean nothing for the others!
Even if you use your electron microscope to compromise the keys of all your hardware components, using normal "man in the middle" code-injection (as mod-chips usually do) will be hard.
So there you have it ... Unless they have screwed up completely by leaving keys readable - this might actually be the first non-hackable console.
That doesn't prevent piracy of course, Chinese Entrepreneurs will line up to duplicate optical copies in about 3 seconds

And in case your thinking "I'll just go get myself an electron microscope and do it myself!". Think again, they cost more than any person could afford and you can't run the damn thing in your basement, the object being examined needs to be in a near perfect vacuum.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electron_microscope

Truth be told, this is simply the reality of the 'new' era of trusted computing. There won't be any 'plaintext' digital holes to exploit any longer and there won't be any uncompromised analog source to copy. The xbox 360 is simply the herald of things to come.

 

[LoneWolf121188]

Wow, I must say, for M$, thats pretty darn impressive!

 

[fuzzba11]

The 360 won't be really cracked for a long time. I have a feeling that it will be like the Gamecube.

I completely disagree, they now understand that the 360 file system resembles the Xbox's, so there's no reason that crackers can't work using the same techniques they used on the Xbox. In addition, the Gamecube never had a hard drive, and only Nintendo had rights over the tiny discs. The 360 will be cracked because it uses a standard sized disc that pirates will be able to duplicate, and it has a hard drive which makes it easy to download ISOs or whatever.

 

[Ramlaen]

gamecube has mod chips out for it and games are fully burnable/downloadable btw

 

[3DFlyer]

I'll give it a month before there is software available to run these disks off the PC. My bet is they are already being cracked on PC's now, and the software is being written. The tough part is finding out about it. By the time you actually find out about it, it's been out for a long time. You gotta go into the chats to find anything anymore...too mnay people have control of the search engines.

 

[Elif Tymes]

astalavista, baby.

Anyways, in order to make this more informational..

Admittedly, this is a breakthrough. I don't really know if/when the games will actually be cracked for backups to be playable. I really think that #1 IF people stopped cracking stuff, we would see much more efficient software(We wouldn't need these checks that go on + devs wouldn't have to worry about making their work secure)

Piracy hurts more than it helps.

 

[tom10167]

Honestly, I'm surprised it took them this long to get only this far. I mean, modchips for the original xbox were released in like less than a month, right? Heck, XP was cracked before it even came out!

Question: if the raw data can be extracted, can't they then make exact copies of the disks, essentially bypassing the copy protection?

Jesus! I didn't know that.

Anyways, it's December, I'm betting by this time next year you'll be able to download XBox360 games before they are released, and play them on your console.

Bets?

 

[SuperFarStucker]

I'll bet my red swingline stapler you're wrong... the only pirate games are going to be exact copies from the chinese pirate underground. How one will go about acquiring these is an exercise left to the reader.

It is completely unnecessary to know anything about the format of the disc to make optical copies either, just a completely blind read. The part that can't be written to on regular dvd-rs is what differentiates the wheat from the chaff so to speak.

A clever hack would be interfacing a hard disk drive to pretend like it is the cd rom and that will probably be the closest anyone gets to 'cracking' it. This is completely different than using the xbox2's internal drive...

 

[Janus67]

I'm going to wager that nobody will ever get the xbox 360 to run unsigned code if even half of the protection features that are thought to exist actually do. As for piracy the simplest way would to get discs that are identical to the x360 discs, I realize they are just dvds but obviously any old dvd+r isn't going to work.

i give it 6 months.

 

[Crana]

Doesnt come as a surprise to me, lol, seen a few xbox360 games on BT already.

 

[threeme2189]

they will crack the damn thing sooner or later.
i give it a good 4-6 months. and i bet somebody will run linux on the thing in a year or so.

 

[_slh_]

the gamecube never realy had any succesful piracy - the unique disks and non pc compatible media protection pretty much stopped all piracy on the system

Wrong. The gamecube has had modchips available for a while now, games are easily d/loaded and burned. You dont even need to buy mini DVDRs to burn them to, as a few companys are making replacement cases that are capable of taking a full size DVD.

 

[=ACID RAIN=]

If the FS for the dvd isn't compatible with standard PC dvd drives, why not focus on the dvd drive firmware instead of the 360? If you could get a drive to read the 360 file system and create a utility to burn it, you've got it made, right? In other words, look for solutions external to the 360. Hack a $40.00 NEC dvd burner to read and burn 360 disks and you've got it beat. It's just a firmware flash and perhaps an open source util for reading/burning.

Not that I'm endorsing this by any means, just stating that what we're speculating in terms of internal hacks may not be what the crackers are thinking about. I guess my question is, does the 360 have a way to determine if a disk is authentic or not, if the disk is an exact copy of a retail disk? I don't know because I don't do console gaming

 

[Careface]

I guess my question is, does the 360 have a way to determine if a disk is authentic or not, if the disk is an exact copy of a retail disk? I don't know because I don't do console gaming

well i made a cloneCD (exact copy) of my 2k4 play disc, and it still detects it as a copied CD and wont run, so my guess is, yes, it will know if its authentic or not

Careface*

 

[=ACID RAIN=]

Well, but does cloneCD do a bit-by-bit copy, or does it have some extra (or missing) data on the copy? I suspect a bit-by-bit true copy would be undetectable. The only way it could know is if there was some extra proprietary data built in to the dvd, outside of normal file system prarmeters, and in that case, the hardware needed to read it (meaning no hackable burners as well).

I'm talking about an extra band of data in otherwise unreadable areas of the dvd, or even a detection of the media type on the reflective layer of the dvd.

 

[SuperFarStucker]

DVD writers can't even write to the area of the disc which determines whether or not the disk is authentic and manufacturers don't even make disks that have that part writable. The pirates have to fabricate the disks themselves. Certainly, it isn't 100% foolproof but no joe thiefpack is going to be able to do it If you can't beat it, fake it.

 

[AC Slater]

The cube was hacked, it just took a really long time for a modchip (3 years or so) and before that you had to stream the games with PSO.

I completely disagree, they now understand that the 360 file system resembles the Xbox's, so there's no reason that crackers can't work using the same techniques they used on the Xbox. In addition, the Gamecube never had a hard drive, and only Nintendo had rights over the tiny discs. The 360 will be cracked because it uses a standard sized disc that pirates will be able to duplicate, and it has a hard drive which makes it easy to download ISOs or whatever.

The discs on the Cube didn't really mean a whole lot when you had a bios that allows unsigned code, and if you didn't want to get a new case for the Cube you can buy the 1.4GB Camcorder DVD-R's that work just fine. Also, the 360 doesn't require a hard drive, remember the Core bundle? The thing functions perfectly well without a hard drive. All the dashboard and kernel info is stored on the 360 not on a hard drive.