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XM Radio Hacked by Car Computer Hobbyists

Posted by michael on from the i-want-my-mtv dept.

An anonymous reader writes "There is an article over at News.com that talks about a small Florida company called Hybrid Mobile Solutions, that hacked XM Radio. They created a cable and software that makes the new XM Commander and XM Direct units work just like an XMPCR. They are in negotiations with TimeTrax to allow recording of XM Radio to MP3's. XMPCR was canned due to this late last month."

1 of 189 comments (clear)

  1. did they ever patch this "hack"? by evilmousse · · Score: 1, Offtopic

    someone told me once how to get xm radio free,
    but i have no idea whether it's true or not.

    since sattelite is strictly 1-way communication,
    the receiver itself locks and unlocks service
    based on it's receiving a message from the
    sattelite like "s/n#1234, lock service".
    the hack comes in by exploiting the undocumented
    habits of these turn on/off packets. because
    of the volume of messages to send since they're
    non-unique and every receiver ignores messages
    that are not for their serial#, the "turn off"
    signals are broadcast once every while
    for 6mo-1yr after you let your service lapse.
    The hack then is to disconnect the power entirely
    from your XM radio for a year after letting
    your service expire, ereafterwards it's free.

    so, is this urban legend? makes sense to me.
    it would be easily thwarted by rebroadcasting
    the totality of disallowed s/ns every once
    in a while, which i would suspect they might do.