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Two Xbox Anti-Hacking Patents Published?
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?
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...
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?
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 ?
--- No 16-bit support in Vista? Half of our modules still use it! ---
Many...big....words
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...
Doesn't think basically kill the Action Replay and the Gameshark because "to prevent hackers from easily obtaining valid credentials for purposes of cheating...."?
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 after is has started, but what the heck. At least average Joe Schmo can't simply download a cheat off the net, and that should do for the most part.
So to make this clear again: These patents are solely about "illegal" (as in patched exectuable, spoofing another player's identity etc) cheating in Xbox Live games. Their method in their given context IS new and needs hardware support, so the patents are not that ridiculous (only a little
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 that's always been part of console gaming. Does this mean Atari or Sony or Nintendo can't use encryption in their games?
In other words, will Microsoft patent this and then start sue'ing Nintendo and Playstation 2 when they try to release a networked game that requires encryption to prevent cheating?
I was rather enjoying games.slashdot.org because regular slashdot.org had turned into a Micro$oft is evil and George Bush is the devil fag-dance.
Can we please move off this topic?