Microsoft to Hire Xbox Hackers?

handsomepete writes "According to PlanetXbox, Microsoft is looking to hire 'software design engineers' to look into the properties of modchips and detection code for hardware. A background in game hacking knowledge is listed as a preferred talent. Will any of the Xbox Linux participants take a stab at this job?"

Comments

We all knew this was going to happen

[Powercntrl]

The Xbox is really just the pilot program for palladium. Once all the security holes are patched, Microsoft will then use what they've learned (after patenting it, of course) to create the most difficult-to-hack DRM PC standard.

Let's just hope sellout hackers aren't as good as not-for-profit hackers.

Re:We all knew this was going to happen

[zerocool^]

Why do you care if XBox is secure or not ?
IT'S A GAMES BOX for crying out loud.

Operating systems: Microsoft releases one every year or two. We'll say 1.5. Say people upgrade every other time (w-95 to w-Me, w-2000-w-XP), so that's one OS, bought for $150, every 3 years.

Video Game systems: Even on an off year, there are 100 titles. Chances are people will buy 6 or 8 in a year. At $50/pop, that's a lot of lost revenue they've lost in royalties over 3 years, a lot more than say operating system attrition. If people pirate games, they stand to lose more than from Operating Systems, and I'll tell you why:

A couple of key points that I've pointed out before. One: MICROSOFT does NOT CARE about individual piracy of windows. That's a fact. They care about idiots pirating it, and they care about coroprations pirating 4000 copies of it. They DO NOT CARE about the average slashdot reader pirating windows, for this reason: We are their free tech support. I pirate windows (sue me), and my dad asks me questions about how to work his computer, quote unquote. I would swear, being the "computer guru" has paid off for Microsoft more so than me, they've gotten their $200 worth out of me, in the way of I've prevented people with problems from contacting Microsoft. I have SAVED THEM MONEY, and therefore it is in their best interest to get windows, latest versions, into my hands as quickly as possible, and for free, so that I know it intimately.

Now, in the realm of games, they stand to lose money. The X-box is essentially an attempt to get into the game industry, specifically for the reasons outlined above: more people buy more video games than operating systems. More money is the bottom line to the X-box. Of course, they spent a god-damn fortune launching the thing with less than stellar titles, and competing with the PS-2's already entrenched lead and the backwards compatability of ps2-psx has proved hard. They can't stand to lose more money.

And speaking of the PS2: Sony, on the other hand, doesn't care if people pirate games for their systems. Why? They make money on the hardware. To play pirated playstation games, you first have to have a playstation. Any rumor that Sony lost money on the playstation or ps2 hardware is bull. They make the thing, and they make money on it.

Now, there once was going to be a Mod-Chip for the PS-2 that was going to eliminate the need for ANY knife trick, ANY boot disk, ANY game shark, etc etc, at the price of having 58 solder points. It was called the Messiah. There are several out there floating around as the Messiah chip, but to my knowledge, none of them actually are the origional planned chip. Sony shut the messiah chip down. Why? Why this one and not any of the others? Why not get the people that made the USB mod chip that needed the game shark?
Because in order for the messiah chip to work, the programmers had to disable ALL security checks, including reagion coding for DVD's, and other DVD anti-piracy measures. Sony had too high a stake in movies, which they stood to lose quite a bit more, enough to shut the Messiah down.

So, to sum up: Microsoft cares about X-Box game piracy, not OS piracy. Sony cares about movie piracy, not Game piracy. In short, it's all about the Benjamins.

~Will

Brian Hook of id Software said it best...

[lpontiac]

In an interview several years ago in boot magazine:

"This is my view of the people who work at Microsoft: You have a choice. You have to realize that what you're doing is bad for the industry. If you're doing stuff that you don't even agree with and do it for the money- we have a word for that: Whore."

Re:Call me crazy, but...

[warmcat]

This is evidently the case, as no one working on the project has had any approach from MS so far.

I think they see it as some distance away from the center of gravity of their customer base, which is mostly pimply -> wrinkly twitchers. Plus they probably rightly see that actually very few of their customers overall will ever get a modchip that is necessary to run it.. 1%-5% something like that.

However the other week Michael Steil, the project lead had Open Office up. That really made me think, with a little more maturity and slickness, quickly and easily booting into being able to run Mozilla, Mplayer, Office apps, all from a free CD and a $10 USB keyboard could potentially give MS nightmares from several angles. What's needed now is a) to still work with the new 'secure' version that's in the pipeline, and b) preferably some way to get control of the machine without a modchip.

On the job offer, most of the folks working on the project are in the EU, and several (although not necessarily all) do not find themselves philisophically aligned with the aims of MS. But if anyone wants to join them, I'd wish them good luck against the modchip manufacturers, they'll need it. I think that kind of job could be interesting, but if they day dawns that you 'win', the excitement fades, the scales fall from your eyes and you look around at the smoking ruins you have caused.