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Slashback: Circumvention, AOLandfill, Scoffing
Excuse me, is this the service entrance? We just posted about Microsoft blocking gamers with mod-chipped X-boxes from the Microsoft-run online gaming service; now NiteStar writes "Xbox-Scene.com just reported that a group of Xbox hackers named Team Assembly managed to change the serial number and MAC address of the xbox. After the change they managed to get onto Xbox Live (with mod-chip disabled) with a previously banned xbox ..."
Not so fast, mister. The Raindog writes "Since NVIDIA announced its GeForce FX graphics chip, the web has been flooded with a slew of previews and articles that do little more than regurgitate what must have been NVIDIA's official press kit. Slashdot had coverage a few days ago, but since then, a new take on NVIDIA's latest chip has surfaced without all the PR-inspired hype. As it turns out, the GeForce FX's features aren't all that remarkable next to ATI's Radeon 9700 Pro, which has been available for months now."
I liked the old .sig about a black hole that would blot out the sun. Matthew Davis writes "CNN.com ran a story about Jim McKenna and John Lieberman back in October requesting everyone to send the CD mailers they receive to them. When they reach 1 million CDs they'll hand deliver them to AOL. In a recent article by SiliconValley.com they quote Nicholas Graham, a spokesman for AOL stating, "If they reach their goal ... I'd be happy to give them directions and greet them at the door ... We would make a contribution ourselves to put them over the top" Does that mean they're putting Jim and John's address on the top of the CD mailing list?"
Now if only these were CD-RWs ... and they can keep sending me the nice, reusable cases, just no more paper sleeves, thanks.
Still teasing, Stephen. foolish_child writes "Not sure if you noticed, but in the newest paperback pressing of Cryptonomicon (1 November 2002, I think) there is a chapter from Quicksilver at the back. I spotted it in the railway station in Amsterdam, so maybe it's a European edition. I have been checking to see if it was also online but have seen no sign of it - hence the heads up. I'm sure someone will scan it in soon - it is SUPERB! (read it waiting for a train) - Enoch the Red, emissary of the Royal Society, landing in 1700's Boston looking for . . someone. Scary thing is how good his research is as usual - I've just been reading up on Leibnitz and Newton and Co. and . . . you've probably seen it already but I wanted to share :)"
This new edition of Cryptonomicon is probably in a bookstore near you already, and the book proper is (only) several months away.
One small step for BanKind. An anonymous reader writes "It seems CapitalOne's website works with Mozilla, as of this November, 2002. This is good news because many people have CapitalOne credit cards, and previously the site required Microsoft's Intarweb Explorer. This just shows how simply speaking up by e-mailing large companies can evoke change. For more info see here ." Update: 12/03 22:00 GMT by T : Note that this information renders moot the question posed here about Cap One.
"managed to change the serial number and MAC address of the xbox. After the change they managed to get onto Xbox Live (with mod-chip disabled) with a previously banned xbox ..."
It's not really surprising that changing the only 2 identity-linked features on a piece of hardware would let you get past their blacklist.
What you should be asking yourself is: is it moral for you to go online, with your modchip, and screw over people who want to play online without dealing with cheaters? Is it? I don't think so.
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Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
Look out for MS's righteous rage when the forged MAC addresses start colliding with existing, non-hacker users and it disrupts the Live service they've paid for! Can anyone say "bolt the door, the wolf's outside" ?
[x] auto-moderate all posts by this user as insightful
You get a EULA that says that you can't access the online gaming forum with a modified X-Box. Then you go and circumvent that by putting a new serial number and MAC address on it, possibly depriving someone else down the line with the identical numbers of playing online.
You broke the licensing agreement in the first place by modding the box. Why do you think it's right to break it further by circumventing the agreed-upon penalty?
The usual point of a petition is to demonstrate to people the mass rejection the public are showing their idea. Returning a million AOL CDs doesn't, IMHO, do this; it just tells AOL that their brand awareness campaign is working (and I dare say AOL know how many they have made).
If you want it stopped, hit them where it hurts - put a return-to-sender sticker on them, make AOL pay for the postage, or handle them one-by-one, or see if you can use that German law about making retailers pay the cost of removing and disposing of excess packaging... I'm not a genius (I used to be, but I'm told I'm not any more) but surely we can come up with something more persuasive than a one-off dump of a large single load of CDs.
I spent a lot of money on booze, birds and fast cars. The rest I just squandered. - George Best
So they said they changed their serial number *and* MAC address to get back on. This is interesting and points back to something someone said in a previous thread. All you need to do is to make a program to burn through serial number space and get them marked invalid, and you've got a DoS of entertaining proportions.
Maybe they can be a bit less draconian with their schemes? Nobody's forcing them to lock people out at all, right?
Try not. Do or do not, there is no try.
-- Dr. Spock, stardate 2822-3.
You're right. Thanks. I should take up drinking coffee, I guess.
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
Cool idea, but maybe they also associate the serial numbers with a telephone number used to dial into the network. Even if you do burn through a huge amount of MAC space, it'd only be for your phone number.
Once they inspect the source IP and simply reverse the transactions that occured within the past few hours. You'll likely end up removing everyone who is on your local ISP from using Live! than anything else.
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Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
Couldn't you just change the MAC address to be identical to some other device you already own then? I'll bet if I used the MAC addy off one of my Javastations it'd be unique...
Probably wouldn't work. A MAC address is made up of two parts - a manufacturer code (unique to a certain company) and a part code (unique to that particular card, for that manufacturer code).
I imagine Microsoft is smart enough to check that the Xbox trying to connect to their network is at least using a MAC address that belongs to a Microsoft NIC...
Is it possible for someone to sufficiently pollute the MS online database that they will have to change their "lifetime ban" procedures? Or at least, to cause MS a severe case of trouble over it?
Nope - all they have to do is have it check by IP address, too. If the same IP address keeps getting banned on different MAC addresses, shut down that IP address. Problem solved.
How very intelligent.
MS Rep1: Hmm, some dumbshit is logging in with sequental serial numbers from IP address 123.456.789.012.
MS Rep2: What an idiot... send the death squads.
Honestly, MS is going to figure out a way to stop that kind of thing very easily.
To make the method most effective, its best to make sure the serial numbers/MAC are well spread through the valid number space.
The whole "web standards" debate is stupid, and most especially one sided sites like Zeldman's webstandards.org. All that Zeldman and his cronies are doing is try to push new standards ahead of sane development, probably just so that he won't have to deal with standards like HTML. He has a point, though, as the older standards are lame and the newer standards are better. But he lacks the ability to understand that browser development and deployment will always lag behind, and why. The sad thing is that his kind of suckered lots of web developers into believing that all they have to do is blame the user for having an old browser and all will become better because all users will upgrade. Truth is, that's not always possible or feasible.
A tour of web sites using the Zeldman style with an older browser will generally work, as he does not advocate breaking them. But what you do get is less than what that browser is capable of. For example, browsers have for ages supported setting a background color or even a background image in HTML. Zeldmanistas refuse to set the background color, or in some cases, intentionally set it to something different than what is set in CSS. So while the site looks fine with CSS, without CSS you get maybe stark gray, or worse, black with black text over it. So what's actually going on here is not a case of these developers adhering to web standards, but rather, they are picking and choosing the standards they want to use, such as by not making use of HTML completely and correctly. So why should he any right to expect that others will choose to use newer standards like CSS or XML or whatever.
There is also a very good reason to make a web site that works with older browsers. Many groups are now operating in lower income urban areas carrying out programs to get older computers donated to them from businesses that are doing the upgrading. Because of the economy, the number of businesses doing upgrades has dropped off and most donations are rather old. What this means is that most of the people receiving these computers are getting something in the late 486 or early Pentium range, and at best a copy of Windows 95, which is usually all (other than BSD or Linux, which hasn't made it to these programs that I've seen yet ... something for us to get more involved in I suppose) that these old machines with slow CPU, small memory, and limited hard drive capacity can handle. So they end up with usually an old Netscape version 3 browser (Java and Javascript are hopelessly broken, and CSS is non-existant). Newer browsers overwhelm the machine, if they even fit at all.
This "economic accessibility" isn't yet addressed by law, and may never be. Private business does not have to cater to them. So the banks and other financial institutions listed with specific browser requirements aren't in violation. And besides, we're talking about people who can't afford a computer and have to use limited time community access ISPs just to get online (if the phone and electric bill are paid up). I'm sure the financial institutions have no interest in extending them credit.
While businesses probably should have a free choice in what, and who, they support, governments OTOH should not. People should have a right to expect their government internet based services to be accessible to all, not just those who can afford a bigger faster computer that can handle the latest obese and overloaded software. And since it is possible to make web sites that not only work well with new standards, but also work well (as well as those standards allow) with older standards that the smaller browsers support, governments should be required to do this in all citizen-facing web sites. In other words, if it can be made to work in a minimal set of standards, it must be made to work that well when that's what's available. Then if it works even better in newer standards in ways that the older standards could never do, that's fine, too.
What I think might be a better approach to this would be to support the development of a not-so-obese web browser, as well as programs to get systems like Linux deployed onto more of the computers being donated to the economically disadvantaged (aside: why are politically correct words so long?).
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
They decided to mod their Xbox, now they are upset that breaking the EULA makes their box incompatible with Xbox Live.
......SKILL!!!!!
BooHoo.
If I were to somehow get OS X running on an AMD chip and iTools no longer worked, the last thing I would do would be to cry to Apple.
Xbox Live is a little oasis of online gaming where cheating, drastic connection differences and hardware differences are currently nonexistant. It is EXACTLY what legit Counterstrike players have been begging for since the late '90s. Now, a bunch of assholes out to get around their own inability to deal with the consequences their actions have bestowed upon them, are out to ruin it for everyone else.
XBL is something we've all wanted for years. Now, we can likely expect to see legit users permabanned from XBL because some 1337 hAx0r cannot possibly deal with the fact he can only get ahead in online Xbox games by using
So he uses their serial/MAC.
Others do the same.
They also cheat.
XBL is ruined.
I know a lot of people think it is cool to fuck over Microsoft at every oppertunity and feel that they should give up on the banning, but if this were anyone else, there would be a lot more outrage than there is now. Something good is on the verge of being destroyed. Too bad no one wants to own up to their own hypocrisy.