Slashdot Mirror
The Hacker Behind "Hacking the Xbox"
chromatic writes "ONLamp has just published an interview with Andrew "Bunnie" Huang, author of Hacking the Xbox. Bunnie discusses the effect of the DMCA on his work and the state of Xbox hacking as he sees it."
It should be, as long as it is not used to run, say, copied games. Microsoft and the DMCA are bastards, who don't seem to know the difference between LEGAL/ETHICAL, and ILLEGAL/UNETHICAL. I don't have an XBox personally, but if I did, I'd be hacking it.
"Your effort to remain what you are is what limits you."
I mean, 733Mhz processor, GeForce 2/3 graphics, the technology is getting rather long in the tooth by today's standards. By the time they actually get a bootable Linux running on this thing, it'll almost be cheaper to just buy a used machine off of eBay...
I know people are going to argue this, but by the time you consider the thousands upon thousands of man-hours put into trying to crack the thing, it's just not worth it.
No, but it does include your Amazon account number... posted in a story about hacking too ;)
Stop the Slashdot effect! Don't read the articles!
"You think it has anything to do with the fact that it's a Microsoft product (the Dreamcast itself booted off a version of Windows CE, for example)?"
It did have a Windows CE logo, almost none of the game used it cause it's crap, and the reason the Dreamcast was such a cool platform was the SH-4 CPU and the fact that it required no modchip to boot games.
No it's not a conspiracy against Microsoft. Of course some people pirate games, but they always will, modchip or not.
There are actually people who enjoy fooling around with hardware.
Once you boot linux through the AUF hack, can't you copy the files you need to boot the xbox from there? I mean that's how the swap trick works kinda, except you have linux running on some OTHER machine (booted from CD) with the proper patch for support for the Xbox's filesystem.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
1) install modchip in xbox
2) borrow/rent games and copy them
3) play copies of games
oh, and alternately
4) install linux
: p
Microsoft has just announced two security updates for the XBox gaming system. According to Microsoft, these exploits could be used to make you trip over your shoelaces in Halo.
The other vulnerability could let hackers fill your hard drive with MP3s over CmdrTaco singing.
The second patch is considered extremely important.
Stop the Slashdot effect! Don't read the articles!
I really don't get it...
Why hack the xbox? I mean even if the boxes are being subsided by M$ it's still a crappy computer.
Only reason I see to hack the thing is to play cracked games...
If you want a cheap home server build a small, fanless (silent), low power consumption (cheap in the long run) VIA mini-itx (small and quite cheap) box.
+ Timesave NOT to hack the Xbox.
Warning: This sig contains a small bug. ==> *
In case you haven't seen it yet, they have low-end machines that are comparable, already running Linux, for about $200.
IANAFETG (I Am Not A Fry's Employee, Thank Goodness)
"A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy." --Theodore Roosevelt
Jack Tripper makes my heart flutter
what about the gaming console for the Gay american? the XY Box?
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
It's never "Bunnie"-- always "bunnie". Even on the book jacket (both versions).
Andrew Huang hacked the x-box over a year ago, and managed to find the key to sign software to run on the xbox isn't this the key that the linux for xbox community has been looking for? Even though Huang has said he wouldn't share the key with anyone, presumably people can reproduce Huang's method for extracting the key. please someone clarify... I'm confused.
I don't know when this interview was actually published, but I think it must have been a while ago-- "Hacking the Xbox" was picked up by No Starch Press, and it appears to be still published by them...
ORN: So what have you been playing lately on your Xbox?
BH: Linux. I don't use my Xbox to play games.
I used to own a copy of Dead or Alive 3, but I gave that to a friend after I got bored of it. I also tried Halo once and bored of it pretty quickly. I tend to play the Nintendo GameCube the most; its games are the most fun. I am still working on beating the new Zelda.
Why would you buy one of these to put linux on? If your not playing games wiht it why not do one of the following:
1) Use a small older computer from ebay and install linux
2) Build a computer and install linux
3) Buy a PS2 with the Linux Kit
4) Buy a dreamcast and burn your linux boot cd
And even then WHAT IS THE POINT? It seems like people just do this because THEY CAN and are not asking whether they SHOULD be doing this?
And I still don;t see the use for it. What are you possibly going to do with Linux on an Xbox that you couldn't do with Linux on your computer?
enlighten me please.
Ave Molech Setting
long live the ybox
I think the XX-Box is a lot more fun to play with.
(sorry)
Dacels Jewelers can't be trusted.
Microsoft is Dieing!
The debate on why you should bother modding an XBox comes up quite frequently, but most people can't seem to get pass the "Q: Why Bother A: WaR3z / Linux" debate. I use my modded XBox as a media player... and it really is very very good. All my MP3s and films (all legal of course!) sit on my pc and the media is streamed down to the XBox. The XBox, in turn, is plugged into my home cinema equipment via an optical connection. Since I don't own a dedicated DVD player or one of those fancy hifi mp3 players, the XBox does the job perfectly and with the added advantage that I can play games on the thing. Sure, I could use a shuttle pc or something, but why bother? An XBox, even included the cost of a mod chip and the remote control, is going to be much less than the cost of a "proper" peecee. Besides, its really nice having the remote control for it.
That Microsoft is losing money on every Xbox sold. Planning to make it up on game sales doesn't really work if people mod it for use as a home computer. What this will probably lead to is more expensive systems and less expensive games, which I don't really mind. If the DMCA prevents this, there is always a NES mod or two to fool around with.
Will kernel 2.6 include Zapper support?
Would KDE or Gnome have cooler support for that...
SAILING MISHAP
I was just reminded of that story a while ago about these kids hacking the xbox and sorta trying to blackmail microsoft. Anyone know what happened?
the most sexp i get is my paren-mode.
No, but it does include your Amazon account number... posted in a story about hacking too ;)
:D
Thank you. You made my evening. Laughed my ass off.
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
i wonder how many readers did a /whois Bunnie the minute they saw the post.
Stop Computers/Cars Analogies on S
Why? Why shouldn't Microsoft have the right to invest in, design, manufacture, and sell a game machine that will play only Microsoft games? Why should you have a "right" to hack such a machine and run non-MS games or Linux on it?
One possible reason why it should not be legal to hack the XBox and run non-MS games or Linux on it is that it would effectively preclude Microsoft from adopting a modified razor blade strategy (pdf) (html) -- i.e., in this case, selling the XBox at a loss and making its profit on the sale of MS XBox games. This strategy is thwarted if Microsoft sells the XBox at a loss, only to have people use it to run Sony games or Linux.
If one insists that one has a "right" to hack the XBox and run Sony games or Linux on it, Microsoft's response may be to raise the price of the XBox to at least the level of its marginal cost. Thus, consumers will wind up paying more for the same product. As a result, demand will go down, and this may result in unemployment and/or reduced wages.
More philosophically, your post appears to represent an attitude of many people on Slashdot that I don't understand. The attitude appears to be that a producer does not have a right to produce and offer for sale a good or service on the terms it deems satisfactory, but instead must offer that good or service to you on terms you feel are satisfactory, or not at all. If a producer does offer a good or service on terms one deems to be unsatisfactory, one is perfectly free not to purchase it. Instead, many insist on the right to unilaterally modify the terms and conditions of sale -- after the fact.
Only Women Bleed (Sex, Sharia remix)
Thank you. You made my evening.
... dork. Do the world a favor Phagboy, swallow a bullet.
Psh
Yeah, I am. It works pretty good considering the hardware. I heard of a guy that constructed one for the college he was attending. I think it was in Kansas, but I am not entirely sure. The XBOX is a great thing to be using under linux.
Support Israeli punk bands. Man Alive.
After all, SOMEONE has to build the modchips.
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
From the interview, Bunnie Huang said:
We should encourage people to buy the book in addition to getting their copy electronically (for those that haven't read the article, the book is licensed under a Creative Commons license that will allow scanning the book in and distributing electronic copies). This is a great chance not only to show how the DMCA stifles free speech but to point out the hypocrisy of thinking of electronic distribution of information is somehow less worthy of free speech protection than traditional paper books. Huang is probably right that paper books enjoy more free speech protection than electronic distribution and that is sad.
In an effort to make this book easier to find and buy, visit this site and support presses that help society freely distribute information. If you have objections to buying from Amazon (who is listed on isbn.nu's price index), there are other places with better prices and availability. Buying direct from the press gives the press the most money.
Digital Citizen
the problem occurs when actions are LEGAL/UNETHICAL.
Just wanted to point that out.
I don't see why running copied games is okay. The issue is not using it to run illegally copied games. I think that should you extend fair use laws to appropriately cover video games, you would have every right to use them without the original media, so long as someone else is not using the same media at the same time.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
If the seller don't want people to modify their stuff, they should make the buyer sign a contract when doing the sale. It is definitely unfair for the customer (even if legal) if they use click-through EULAs or unknown-by-joe-public laws such as DMCA.
thank your friends in your goverment, luckily the rest of the world can do as it pleases , great thing freedom egh, maybe you will find it one day but in corporate run USA you are just paid slaves
Better looking than an "anteater".
Anteater's foreskins can be retracted and they don't look like skinned rats. Anteaters feel better when you have sex, and I love tugging on the foreskin with my lips. You don't even need lube when playing with your boyfriend's anteater.
--Linux Chick
Nonono, didn't you watch the movie? After Neo used the key to gain access to the Architect, the hall of doors blew up, meaning that having the key would be worthless anyways. Oh wait, you meant the key to the X-box?
I think perhaps it is time for a sidebar; it seems relevant to this story given the position many seem to be supposing.
"The attitude appears to be that a producer does not have a right to produce and offer for sale a good or service on the terms it deems satisfactory, but instead must offer that good or service to you on terms you feel are satisfactory, or not at all."
Yes, because it is we who set the terms on which those privileged entities, corporations, may profit and prosper within our great nation.
Corporations are permitted to exist in that manner which and only for a time which pleases us and benefits us.
Do you understand perfectly what we are saying? Corporate and powerful private interests have no right or expectation to exploit the great majority that they might raise themselves up over and against their peers.
The state of things is as it is only so far and for so long as we permit it to be. These corporate and powerful private interests have nothing we have not allotted them for a time and for limited purposes, and through our rich democratic process we may just as easily take it again from them when and so far as they abuse it.
We are not pawns. We control our own destiny. Our rights will be respected.
.sig Realistic fines for copyright in
Because they sell it to us. It then becomes ours. That means we can do what we want with it including use as gift, doorstop, trash it, destroy it, reverse engineer it, whatever.
If they want to make ms only hardware then they can rent or lease it and handle the cost of churn and upkeep themselves. Why don't they?
Because it is not worth it. That must mean that ms only hardware is not worth doing past what they are doing right now.
Simple really.
Blogging because I can...
More philosophically, your post appears to represent an attitude of many people on Slashdot that I don't understand. The attitude appears to be that a producer does not have a right to produce and offer for sale a good or service on the terms it deems satisfactory, but instead must offer that good or service to you on terms you feel are satisfactory, or not at all.
The problem is that Microsoft is confusing "goods" with "service." In the case of software, it is intellectually questionable whether software is a particular thing, or just a license to use a concept that someone else has developed. Consequently, some software is "sold" and other software is "licensed."
Now consider a cell phone. I could go buy a SonyEricsson P800 for about $700. But without a service plan it would be a fairly useless device. Sure it can do 640x480 pictures and send them over bluetooth, but for $700 I expect a lot more. Instead, I buy a Nokia 3650 from ATT Wireless for $150 plus around $90 in monthly service fee (I talk on the phone a lot). ATT has locked my phone so that I cannot switch providers during the term of my contract. Since I'm getting a phone that is worth close to $700 for $150 and a monthly service fee, this is reasonable -- I still owe ATT some value for the use of their device.
Now consider a Rolex watch. Suppose the price of gold went up so much that it was profitable to buy Rolexes and melt them down for their gold. People would flock to jewelry stores to get the gold watches and sell off the gold. Rolex might be angry, but it is really their fault for not analyzing the gold market carefully enough.
Finally, consider an XBox. Microsoft wants to sell XBoxes for $199 so that you can play their $60 games. I want to open my XBox up and put Linux on it. It happens that Microsoft paid arund $350 to make each XBox, so if I don't buy a few games, MSFT loses out. Should I cry for Microsoft's lost profits? no.
Now if Microsoft had sold me the console for $199 plus a monthly fee I might consider using it according to MSFT's guidelines. They are selling a good but treating it like a service. I will continue to treat it like a good that I own. You can treat it like a service if you want.
Microsoft's biggest blunder here is not that they are treating a good like a service, but that they are alienating a small but influential portion of the gaming public. A few geeks want to open up their Xboxes and mess around with them. The vast majority of gamers are going to buy some Xbox games and make Microsoft even more money (once they get past the startup expenses, of course). If Microsoft took a more postivie attitude, XBox console and game sales would probably increase.
bash-2.05a$ man woman
No manual entry for woman
bash-2.05a$ make love
make: *** No rule to make target `love'. Stop.
bash-2.05a$ %blow
bash: fg: %blow: no such job
bash-2.05a$
MS uses a layered crypto scheme...
1. At CPU reset a hidden ROM image inside the chipset decrypts the main BIOS flash image. This is the key Bunnie found.
2. The BIOS image then decompresses and decrypts the extended BIOS image using a key different from the one used in step 1.
3. This extended BIOS then loads the kernel from disk and validates it using yet another different key.
4. The kernel then uses yet another key to validate the games loaded off DVD-ROM. This would be the key everybody is after.
--Rob
I know I am. Think about what is really happening here. This bunnie guy is having a hard time publishing a book because of commercial interests. Doesn't anyone else think that this reflects a sad state in a nation when books are being "banned" for commercial interests? Three publishers are/were interested in the book. One turned him down and the other two need to do legal research to see if it "violates" the DMCA. How much longer until the book burning? The DMCA is nasty and NEEDS to go down.
If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land,
it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy. -James Madison
The XBox kernel only verifies if a game loaded off the DVD-ROM was signed by a Microsoft key, it doesn't have the key to sign games.
In this signature scheme (public key), the key has two parts:
Pardon me if I don't give a damn.
A note for anyone who doesn't already know - the upgraded dashboard (which has cool features and is a mandatory upgrade) has the bert & ernie font buffer overflow bugs fixed.
If you've software modded your Xbox, the code you used isn't the stealth code (which I don't think is public), and you are taking it online with Live, it'll de-mod your Xbox (at the very least), or possibly ban your Gamertag, credit card for future Gamertags, and MAC address.
Of course, while the Xbox you purchased belongs to you (goods), and the Xbox Communicator you (might have) purchased (might) belong to you (goods), you're morally (though not legally, but who gives a damn?) in the clear modding your own Xbox, no problem.
Take it online with Live though, and you're connecting to the Xbox Live service, a closed network created specifically to provide a secure homogeneous multi-player gaming platform so that all players could compete on a level playing field, no funny tricks. While I'm very heavily anti-DRM (i.e., I'm a cracker: no, not biscuit/kiddie, but deprotectionist) on public platforms (interoperability and all), this kind of closed gaming network is an interesting special use I'm quite happy with. Really the only people signing their modded Xbox onto Live are doing it because either (A) they want to cheat, or (B) they want to play copied games online. I have zero sympathy for either of these uses.
The Terms of Service, which definitely are enforceable, state very very clearly Xbox + Mod + Live = Ban.
If you want to mod your Xbox to make a cool media player, or because your kid sister scratches your game DVDs, bully for you - but play fair - buy another Xbox, and leave it unmodded, if you want to play on Live, please. Your kid sister shouldn't be on there anyway and remember that MS still lose money for every Xbox sold...
This one goes out to Stefan Esser, who really should know better. (See Full-Disclosure for background.)
Perhaps the BEST thing you can do with a modded Xbox is Xbox media player. You can watch DivX, AVI, MPEG, Xvid movies that run off of the Xbox hard drive or a network drive right on your TV.
Along with MP3, and many other music compressions that I cant even spell.
Not to mention various emulators, and it still plays Xbox games. You can mod chip an Xbox and stick in a 120 gig HD for about $300. You can't buy a PC that will do that as well for $300.
I've been thinking about buying this book, but I'm not willing to buy a xbox. My question is if the book is any good without a xbox, if one could learn some stuff without having the hardware to watch/modify. I'm not much into hardware, but I'm willing to learn some stuff and I thought about buying this book, but I'm not sure if it would do me any good (maybe it's too advanced for some newbie like me).
i just want to note that USING something for an illegal, dangerous or terroristic activity is legal.. the ACTIVITY is illegal but not USING something FOR it. Semantics you may say.. but as far as i know you can't get hauled off into jail for USING a gun to kill someone, but for the actual ACT of killing someone.
learn from yesterday, plan for tomorrow, party tonight
or one out of three ain't bad
A bit off topic, but it seems an awful stretch apply the DMCA to this book. The "trafficing" provisions of the DMCA only apply to a "technology, product, service, device, component, or part thereof." (see http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/ts_search.pl ?title=17&sec=1201)
None of these categories appear to cover a book, regardless of what it teaches. The anticircumvention provision would not apply either because the book itself doesn't circumvent anything (doing what it teaches might violate the law, but that's hardly new or unique). I suspect that the DMCA is being used as an excuse here.
you gotta have faith in GW Bush and BGates, and they will lead US to the promised land, where there are no icky terrorists or hackers...if only YOU'D OBEY!!!!!!!!!
Why bother unless you're looking to play pirated games? You can get a much better PC system for a couple hundred bucks that'll be faster and not have to "hack" it.
Just to get this discussion to go a little deeper, let me play advocatus diaboli: What about me? By the same argument used by dmaxwell, if I go into a store and buy a linux distribution that doesn't make me sign a license before using it, I do own the bits. So why should I not use it in a manner that it's authors didn't intend me to, and -for instance- incorporate bits of open source software into my closed source product? (The issue is, of course, not quite as clear cut as this, but I believe that this demonstrate that not having signed a license isn't the equivalent of not having to abide by one (and, if I am not mistaken, there's some language on the box stating that an owner has to abide by the inbox license))
Another equally rabble-raising scenario: I buy a gun and ammunition, remove the safety and file holes into the bulletpoints. Your reaction might be to say that now I am in clear violation of the law - but that's just what the DCMA is, too. So - is it ok to selectively choose which laws one respects?
As a general purpose PC you are right. However, the $199 PC will not have the comparatively high end graphical capabilities of the Xbox, nor TV-out.
An Xbox could be an incredibly fun toy to play with in this respect. "Hacking It" is not a chore to most of us here, but an enjoyable activity.
No, you are violating copyright law when you violate the GPL. You are not violating copyright law when you hack your X-Box.
if I go into a store and buy a linux distribution that doesn't make me sign a license before using it, I do own the bits. So why should I not use it in a manner that it's authors didn't intend me to, and -for instance- incorporate bits of open source software into my closed source product?
As long as you don't distribute the resulting code, you're within your rights to combine the two for personal use. Neat, eh? This is analogous to you console hacking for personal use rather than game piracy.
I buy a gun and ammunition, remove the safety and file holes into the bulletpoints. Your reaction might be to say that now I am in clear violation of the law - but that's just what the DCMA is, too.
That just says to me that American gun laws are inconsistent. If the government is that concerned about safety, perhaps they shouldn't let arms companies flood the country with handguns. At any rate, not all laws should be regarded equally. Ideally the public will support laws they perceive as just, and undermine / ignore unjust laws. Most people jaywalk or share mp3s without a second thought, but would never dream of commiting murder.
Vino, gyno, and techno -Bruce Sterling