10 Xbox 360 Dev Kits Stolen in Germany

BlueStar writes "Ten Xbox 360 Development Kits have been stolen from a storehouse in Düren, Germany. They were being transported from HongKong for game developers in Europe together with other Microsoft products and wrapped in neutral packaging. 3 of the 10 XeDKs have been found after searches in Germany and Austria ... probably in the homes of the people that leaked out those (now deleted) Xbox 360 motherboard pictures not so long ago."

Comments

Hey! It's life!

[Pig Hogger]

The tighter you grip, the more information you'll lose.

Security through obscurity is stupid from the start; it ALWAYS gets b0rk3d into.

How would this help linux-on-Xbox?

[cgenman]

I've already seen some comments with respect to how this could be a great leap forward in getting arbitrary code to run on the xbox. However, what you have to realize is that the Development Kits don't sign code, Microsoft signs code. All the development kits allow you to do is create code that will run on a special Xbox-like development platform. It's possible that the dev platform would help in figuring out the architecture of the system, but some kid from MIT would likely have that figured out two weeks after launch anyway. It also might also simplify the process of creating code for hacked Xboxes. But ultimately, the limitation isn't writing code on chipped consoles, the limitation has always been getting code to run on non-modified consoles. Having Xbox 360 development stations won't help that.

There are tens of thousands of Xbox development kits floating throughout the world, many in the hands of people who would love to see Linux on Xbox. But it didn't help with that effort. And likely having a few loose cannon Xbox 360 development kits won't make a difference in getting arbitrary code on that system either.

Microsoft signs the code. Unsigned code won't run. Either snag a code signing station (good luck!) or break the cryptography. Nothing less will suffice for a pure software solution.

Obligatory Futurama ref.

[nherm]

with other Microsoft products and wrapped in neutral packaging

Bill: I hate these filthy Neutrals, Steve. With enemies you know where they stand but with Neutrals, who knows? It sickens me.

Here come the mod chips...

[supabeast!]

I'm sure that at least one of these will end up in the hands of a mod-chip manufacturer, and give them a nice head start on cracking the copy protection of the 360.

Re:Here come the mod chips...

[Anonymous Coward]

I personally don't know if having a development kit 6 weeks before you can get an actual system will actually make a difference. Personally, I have never worked with or used a console development kit but I suspect that most of the hardware used in copy protection would probably be missing; after all why would you need copy protection in a development platform?

The only real benefits I could see of examining a development platform would be that you could examine how the system works in the absence of copy protection hardware (thus you could potentially bypass it) or you could examine documentation on the hardware looking for a weakness (although why would anyone include any documentation on the copy protection?).

Re:How dumb are they...

[Breakfast Pants]

The Xbox mod community is larger than the communities for any of those systems you mentioned. There are parts of the Xbox mod community that don't use the Microsoft dev kit in writing their apps. Just because there are some that do doesn't mean everyone in the community is "bad".