Xbox 360 File System Decoded

slurpster writes "The register reports that Pi group has decoded the file system used in the Xbox 360. They write "Once you get past the protections and down to the raw bits on the disc, its just the standard xboxdvdfs, however the offset and layer breakpoint are different.""

Comments

Look out

[kalla]

Cue the legal threats in 3..2..

Re:Look out

[Anonymous Coward]

It starts like 3.14...

Re:Look out

[IAmTheDave]

Cue the legal threats in 3..2..

Ya know, it's starting to become a relatively predictable model, game systems, especially for MS. 1) Release console, 2) hackers bypass DRM, 3) someone deciphers FS, 4) ROMs released, emulators attempted, 5) Linux now runs on it, etc.

I'm wondering if, along with the release of a game system, Microsoft and other companies don't have legal offenses prepared in advance, so that the pounce-factor on those that break the FS/DRM schemes is near immediate. Would make sense, since it's almost guarenteed that someone will break it, and they'll get threatened/sued.

Re:Look out

[grasshoppa]

I think that may be a bit high brow humor for the morning crowd.

Got me chuckling though.

Re:Look out

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, definitly enough to establish a pattern. MS have only released one console you know? Well, two, but the 360 is still in the hacking stage of the pattern I'm pretending not to acknowledge.

Re:Look out

[robgamble]

I don't even know why MS makes an attempt to obscure the machine. It's common knowledge that the XBox is a suped-up PC with dedicated packaging. Even the consumers who aren't programmers and /.'ers know this.

Re:Look out

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sure Microsoft isn't threatened by a handful of hackers that want to run Linux on the Xbox 360, they want to avoid the pirates and the cheaters hacking the system. It takes a special breed of dork to buy a $400 Xbox 360 and mess around with it until it runs Linux.. 99% of the rest of the people would take that $400 and just buy a PC.

Re:Look out

[ThosLives]

Cue the legal threats...

Indeed. They might even here from these guys.

Re:Look out

[InvalidError]

That was true for the original XBox which was based on PC-ish and off-the-shelf hardware. For the 360, it would be more like a souped-up Mac/(whatever else uses PPC chips).

Since the custom PPC and chipset/GPU for the 360 were tweaked specifically for M$ from the very start instead of quick hacks of off-the-shelf designs to make them less interoperable, chances are that the 360 will be much harder to crack.

Re:Look out

[Traiklin]

well atleast sony is taking care of Step 5.

when you buy the HDD for it it (supposedly) comes pre-installed with linux.

Re:Look out

[robgamble]

Does that mean once cracked this could be a pretty powerful machine for other non-specialized uses? I heard chatter in another discussion about the 360 having 3 processors or 3 cores. With a fast RISC processor and cheap price tag, is cracking the 360 just fun or could it lead to some awesome cheap hardware for your next PostgreSQL or CAD server? (serious question)

Re:Look out

[aichpvee]

If that were true they would have released a bootloader for Linux like the Linux hackers requested instead of forcing them to hack the xbox in a way that would also allow piracy. Maybe microsoft wouldn't care if they didn't have an operating system monopoly to protect but then they also wouldn't have the billions of dollars to lose breaking into the game business.

Re:Look out

[fredfl]

"Linux now run on it" BWahahaha! Thats exactly what my brother said as soon as the Xbox was release, he said.. wait 3 weeks, somebody will be loading linux onto it.

Re:Look out

[Anonymous Coward]

the XBox is a suped-up PC

It is "souped up", not "suped-up". It doesn't derive from Superman or "being made super", but rather from "soup" as in "material injected into a horse to make it run faster" as later applied to the horsepower of cars. It is influenced by "supercharged", but it originates with horse doping.

Re:Look out

[InvalidError]

The 360's PPCs are stripped-down cores, they are very un-powerful for anything that has non-linear code/data dependencies. Among things that were stripped from the PPC is out-of-order execution and branch prediction, which would kill performance for stuff that has non-linear code or data dependencies. For games, most of the processing is bulk geometric and physics transforms, the dual-threaded simplified PPC cores can deal with that reasonably well but do not expect branchier stuff (like relational DBs) to fare well.

Simpler cores have lower per-thread performance (shared resources) but simple multi-threading cores should scale much better in troughput/core and throughput/watt. (less/no wasted work, fewer sub-circuits having idle cycles, less duplicated logic) I personally believe that such quad-threading CPUs will be the sweet spot 3-4 years from now.

Re:Look out

[Tatsh]

Why is this news just getting out? This was like a week ago!

Re:Look out

[rookworm]

Actually, I think it's the Xbox 6.28.........

Re:Look out

[torpedo20]

Harder but it will get done. The odd hardware didn't stop modding the Sony PS2...

Re:Look out

[rcbarnes]

Patterns?

Look at MSs flagship product.
1) Release new version of Windows
2) Find lots of bugs and holes
3) Lose more market share to Linux (and MacOS)
4) Release a half-finshed feature-crippling patch
5) Wonder why people love to hate you

If they can't fix that, how are they gonna do anything about *social* patterns?

Re:Look out

[Lucractius]

Thats also one of the crippling features of modern consoles in general, branchy code has always been a large factor of "good" AI, its inherent in complex decision making, so AI & bots/sims are getting a serious setback with machines that suck at branchy code.

This was infact highly notable when examining the PS3, The Cell design they used was abysmal when it comes to highly branching AI or decision making type code. And it seems the 360s cpu is as well. What remains to be seen is wether Nintendos cpu also has this encumberment or if they have foreseen it and attempted to allow speedier branching. Given the difference in market focus its quite possible.

But even with low branching performance, it would still make a damn powerful machine to offload work to. 6 threads at 3.2Ghz can crunch a lot of data regardless, since theyre PPC with a reasonable pipeline length it doesnt suffer as much as say.. a P4 would.

and
"Simpler cores have lower per-thread performance (shared resources) but simple multi-threading cores should scale much better in troughput/core and throughput/watt. (less/no wasted work, fewer sub-circuits having idle cycles, less duplicated logic) I personally believe that such quad-threading CPUs will be the sweet spot 3-4 years from now."

well its the sweet spot now actualy. Check out the Sun UltraSparc T1 cpus and their new servers based on them, capable of 8 cores each running 4 simultaneous threads, and theyre working on the 16 core version and getting that ready for next year. Sun saw multithreading and Dual cores as the future before 2000 and theyve been getting ready for it in a big way as those servers show.

Re:Look out

[InvalidError]

If the P4 was reworked for pure multithreaded performance, it would have close to double the throughput for half the watts. What's holding back desktop CPUs is obsession with single-thread performance for legacy software which leads to barely manageable complexity - the P4 is one fine example of this complexity getting out of hands.

As for the T1, I have known about it for about a year but I have been thinking that quad-threaded CPUs would be the sweet spot since the first time I heard about multi-threading chip theory. With a single thread, one needs complex logic extract ILP to consistently use more than 40% of the chip's execution resources but the extra logic uses more power, uses more logic, adds latency and wastes work when results from speculative execution (missed branch prediction... and many other things with Netburst) are discarded. With dual-threaded core and those complex tricks, utilisation can reach close to 100%. A pure quad-threading core should be able to stick close to 100% execution unit load with nothing more than minimal/basic instruction reordering, something like 16 instructions deep instead of 96+ on modern single-threaded-performance-centric CPUs - and that is indeed pretty close to where the US-T1 is at.

My 3-4 years guesstimate is the time I think the mainstream (desktop) market will need to shift from single-threaded performance to multi-threaded with enough pressure on performance/watt to make AMD/Intel revisit multi-threading for maximizing throughput/core and throughput/watt. Yes, this is what Sun has been plotting for the last few years but US-T1 is not and never will be a mainstream chip.

Re:Look out

[Anonymous Coward]

You know 360 degrees=2*pi radians

Re:Look out

[Bo'Bob'O]

Shouldn't that be 6.28?
It is an X-box -360- afterall.

Re:Look out

[tonsofpcs]

I wonder why MS doesn't just release a *usable* version of Windows for their game systems that can compete with 'modders'. I know many people who would rather buy some disc they can put in to run a 'standard' operating system than hack their box with a hacksaw.

Took that long?

[GatorMan]

I hope MS DRM in future products is this unbreakable...psshh

Re:Took that long?

[Elixon]

There will be always more clever people out there then those employed in various corporations...

The motivation is the key. Salary is a motivation but the fun is bigger motivation. :-)

The word "unbreakable" should not be used anymore. (Only liars from marketing departments use it :-)

Re:Took that long?

[Anonymous Coward]

Except google. They are hiring all of the clever people, and giving them enough time to do fun stuff on the side during company time.

Re:Took that long?

[Kent Simon]

There will be always more clever people out there then those employed in various corporations...

That is a bit misleading. It takes a lot more work to design something hard to break, and to be sure that it is hard to break, than to actually break something.
security is always a losing battle because the ammount of work put in to make something 'unbreakable' is often exponentially larger than the ammount of time taken to find a small mistake.

Re:Took that long?

[Anonymous Coward]

DRM? Who said anything about DRM? What are you talking about? Oh, sorry, its Microsoft...bash away! hehe, I love Slashdot!

Re:Took that long?

[Ankou]

Its probably becuase they only had 30 minutes at a time to work on it before it overheated ;)

Re:Took that long?

[monsted]

If you read the article, you'd know that it wasn't the DRM that was broken, but just the file system layout.

It does open up the stage for people who actually want to start working on breaking DRM.

Re:Took that long?

[Kaboom13]

Remember that the MS engineers have a near impossible task. They have to design a DRM system to ensure only official games work, but at the same time,
A. The DRM is implemented into a consumer device that the "enemy" has complete access too.
B. The DRM can not be complex as to hinder third party companies making licensed games.
C. The DRM can not signifigantly impact the performance of the device (ie no CPU intensive encryption).
D. The Xbox itself has to be able to un-drm the code to play the game.
E. Because old games can not be updated on a console, the DRM can not be changed or updated after release.
F. The DRM system can not signifigantly add to the cost of production of the consoles or games.

Basically DRM on consoles is a losing battle. All the odds are stacked against the developers. Add in the fact that the number of people trying to break it probably greatly exceeds the number of people responsible for it's development in the first place, and it becomes a fight MS can't hope to win. However, the tougher the DRM is, the more complicated the workarounds will be. Consider how massive dreamcast piracy (Dreamcast games could be copied with no mod chip and a cd burner) was compared to playstation piracy (required a mod chip with lots of soldering at first, later would require just a swap disk trick). The dreamcast sold a lot less then the playstation, but the piracy scene was enormous in comparison because it was so easy.

Re:Took that long?

[IamTheRealMike]

It's worth noting that figuring out a disk image format is a million years away from breaking Xbox 360 security. Nobody should read much into this.

There will be always more clever people out there then those employed in various corporations...

Yeah, that's what I used to think as well. These days I think differently.

Sure, the world is full of clever people. However, the clever people who work for the technology companies have several advantages over those that don't:

• They work full time. In terms of sheer man-hours the tech companies can throw at the problem, Joe Randoms in their bedrooms will always lose.
• They work together. The internet is great but a mailing list and IRC channel for people in 12 different timezones is no substitute for a well equipped set of offices and labs where everybody works together every day.
• They have access to advanced equipment most other people don't. For instance, fully reverse engineering smart cards is very hard because you need tools that can be difficult to get hold of (eg, SEMs)
• They have (almost) unlimited financial resources, so they can buy the work and brainpower of other smart people

I think people have been misled by the ease of breaking pure software copy protection on x86 computers. Compared to dealing with custom hardware like the Xbox pure software solutions are very easy to attack because many people have the required tools and knowledge (typically a debugger and fluency in assembly). Comparitively few people have tools to look inside microchips and figure out what they're doing - and of course, physical things are far harder to change than software which is just a series of numbers.

And even then, it's possible to make very tough to crack pure software solutions if you get enough smart people on the problem. For instance, Windows Media DRM has had remarkably few exploits given how high profile it is: the last was back in January IIRC and it was rapidly patched (so it no longer worked after a few weeks). Even then that crack didn't let you decrypt any arbitrary file: you had to actually purchase a license first. The current generation has remained uncracked for nearly a year.

For games, some programs protected with StarForce encryption have never been cracked (and some have, but StarForce lets the developers decide how much effort they'll put into protecting their software so that's not really surprising).

Anyway, if you look at the actual technical details of how things like Xbox and DVD protection were cracked, they mostly relied on massive flukes that were only found after years of searching and typically a 3rd party had to screw up somewhere first. With each successive generation of these technologies they've been iteratively improved and I see no reason why console protection won't follow the same path DirecTV/NDS satellite security followed: a few generations in, no more cracks have become available even after many years and despite the potential profit.

Re:Took that long?

[duguk]

There maybe more clever people employed in corporations, but that doesn't mean they actually work.

> They work full time.

Naa, they're just employed full-time, doesn't mean they'd actually put more effort into working than at home ;)

Ok, I'm just bitter because most of my coworkers are lazy bastards ;)

Oh - and don't forget, it only takes one person to break the technology, and the company will only implement what they can afford.

DugUK

Re:Took that long?

[soupdevil]

Windows Media DRM is still holding strong, much to the relief of Napster and its ilk.

Re:Took that long?

[JahToasted]

Yeah but all it takes is for one former employee to spill the beans. Or maybe a current employee who doesn't like his job.

Also, the consumer has to have some way to get the media. Its not all that easy to deny the hacker what he's after but still allow the consumer to get what he paid for.

Re:Took that long?

[HTH NE1]

B. The DRM can not be complex as to hinder third party companies making licensed games.

Sure it can. How else is Microsoft to make a profit on every XBOX 360 game sold by granting access to the platform to third-party companies for money?

E. Because old games can not be updated on a console, the DRM can not be changed or updated after release.

Backwards compatibility can be maintained where desired and the console has network connectivity. Especially if you can ban Live users until they update. There's also embedding updates in future game releases and on movie DVDs (or CDs? where's the XBOX 360's shift key?).

Granted, I don't expect to see Mechwarrior or that 007 game emulated on an XBOX 360.

Re:Took that long?

[Anonymous Coward]

... and I see no reason why console protection won't follow the same path DirecTV/NDS satellite security followed: a few generations in, no more cracks have become available even after many years and despite the potential profit.

Check back in about a week or two and then tell me how DirecTV is doing ;)

Re:Took that long?

[Groo Wanderer]

"B. The DRM can not be complex as to hinder third party companies making licensed games."

Unless something radically changed this time, that is not an issue. The DRM is applied after the game is done, it is part of the manufacturing process. Basically, the people give MS the gold code, MS applies the DRM infection, encrypts it, whatnot, and then makes a master.

This has been the same since day one, but I only have first hand knowledge going back to the Atari Jaguar. :)

            -Charlie

Re:Took that long?

[salgiza]

Yes. But those clever hackers have something that most people who work for technology companies don't have. Lots of motivation. They don't do it for money, they do it because it's a challenge.
And you can be thankful that most hackers don't even think of using social engineering.

That's not to say that cracking something as the XBOX 360 is going to be easy or fast, nor that I disagree with part of your post. But we are still far away (if it ever happens) from the point that it is too expensive/complicated to crack this kind of security.

Re:Took that long?

[Glooty-Us-Maximus]

"# They work full time. In terms of sheer man-hours the tech companies can throw at the problem, Joe Randoms in their bedrooms will always lose."

Simply because someone is simply sitting in a cube for 8->12 hours a day doesn't mean they are any more effective than someone who is putting in ~4->6 hours a day in his off-work hours (and lets not forget weekends). You will also find that someone works far more effectively when the work is fun.

"# They work together. The internet is great but a mailing list and IRC channel for people in 12 different timezones is no substitute for a well equipped set of offices and labs where everybody works together every day."

Umm, Linux versus Windows?

Linux came out of nowhere, built nearly entirely by people who are in different timezones in their basements/home offices/etc. Microsoft had rooms full of hired talent working on their OS. Look at how well Linux has done compared to Microsoft in many areas (servers, embedded systems, etc).

You also forget that you can have many more people working together via The Internet than you can cram into an office building/park/etc.

I know that in the past couple of years corporations have been responsible for a lot of Linux progress, but an amazing amount of work had been done prior to this which resulted in a surprisingly usable and stable system. If your argument were true, Linux should be no more than a gleam in Torvald's eye.

"# They have (almost) unlimited financial resources, so they can buy the work and brainpower of other smart people"

See above.

I recommend you read "The Cathedral and the Bazaar" by Eric S. Raymond.

Re:Took that long?

[StikyPad]

Even if a crack were released for DirecTV tomorrow, it's been around for about a decade. A console only needs to survive for half that amount of time. Regardless, I'll be interested to see what happens.

Re:Took that long?

[Anonymous Coward]

You totally missed his/her point. Perhaps it should be articulated in more blunt terms. Physical(hardware) security adds a huge barrier to entry that even the most lavishly equipped basement laboratory cannot deal with. Think about it, it won't hurt. On a side note, ESR is a useless tool, I wouldn't spend my monthly garbage on a word he penned.

Re:Took that long?

[Anonymous Coward]

HER? there are no girls on the internet.

Re:Took that long?

[earthstar]

For instance, Windows Media DRM has had remarkably few exploits given how high profile it is: the last was back in January IIRC and it was rapidly patched (so it no longer worked after a few weeks). Even then that crack didn't let you decrypt any arbitrary file: you had to actually purchase a license first. The current generation has remained uncracked for nearly a year.

With every software being cracked by crackers group,what makes WMA DRM so rigid that there is simply no way to crack it?[ Other than recording through Line-in which isnt great idea].

Re:Took that long?

[slashdotwannabe]

technology is unbreakable like the Titanic was unsinkable.

Re:Took that long?

[Anonymous Coward]

A Charlie post without an inquirer whoring link? Quick, what's the temperature in hell right now?

Mirror

[un1xl0ser]

http://www.theregister.co.uk.nyud.net:8090/2005/12 /13/xbox_360_file-system_cracked/

how?

[mistersooreams]

I've always wondered how you actually go about understanding a file system with absolutely no documentation. I realise in this case that they just had to circumvent some DRM-style file protection, but that still leaves the question of how xboxdvdfs came to be understood in the first place. Does anyone know how they do this? Little to my surprise, the article offers no details.

Re:how?

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's how I'm guessing (though I really have no idea): Look for an area in the data with strings that may represent file names. Once these are found, look at the data in between the strings for pointers to other parts of the data and follow them.

Re:how?

[SigILL]

I've always wondered how you actually go about understanding a file system with absolutely no documentation.

Well, you know the contents of the files as well as their names, right? So you can use a simple text search to figure out where on the disk the contents are placed. Then you look for structures on the disk that appear to point to these contents.

You can for example figure out the size of a directory entry by looking for the amount of characters between successive file names. After that, things like file size and other metadata can usually be readily detected.

There's admittedly some guesswork involved. That's why official documentation is always preferrable to something that's reverse engineered.

Re:how?

[Aladrin]

There's a lot of trial and error involved, but mainly it's a matter of understanding how it's been done in the past and how it could be done.

You start by looking for signs of things you know should exist. It's Microsoft, so they would probably use a file system along the lines of one they already use, like FAT or NTFS. Look for signs like a file table and figure out how they stored the information regarding where things are placed.

With some trial and error, you can determine exactly how things are placed there, and what format is used to describe them. (Meta data.) After you understand the meta data, you write a program to let you access it easier and then you start understanding the data.

I'm not guessing at any of this. This is exactly the process I used to write my Sims skn2obj converter a few years back. Maxis was very very tight-lipped on everything and wouldn't even respond to eep2 or I. He pointed out how close it looked to OBJ format and I took it from there. It turned out the format was relatively close, but there was a lot of extra data that obj didn't handle and everything had been rotated and transformed.

Anywhere, as always, it's a ton of work and guesswork both. (Very rewarding, though, once you get it.)

As for how to break encryption... I assume it's along the same lines, but I've never even tried it.

Re:how?

[morgan_greywolf]

You look for recognizable structures. For instance, if you have some idea of the filenames involved, you might start looking for those in a mixed hex/ASCII dump, then start trying to figure what the numbers before and after the filename mean.

In analyzing these numbers, you try to see emerging patterns that represent data structure. One 64-bit number might refer to a location in a FAT table, or it might refer to something like an inode, another might contain a date/time stamp. Some other numbers might represent a files attributes or permissions. It's about making educated guesses. It helps if you have some way of reading back the data structure -- either through a program that reads the filesystem or in this case, the Xbox itself. That way you can start playing with different values and see what effect that they have when read back.

Re:how?

[tpgp]

I've always wondered how you actually go about understanding a file system with absolutely no documentation.

From Wikipedias Reverse Engineering Page

Reverse engineering of software can be accomplished by various methods. The three main groups of software reverse engineering are:

      1. Analysis through observation of information exchange, most prevalent in protocol reverse engineering, which involve using bus analyzers and packet sniffers for example for listening into a computer bus or computer network connection, revealing the traffic data underneath. Behaviour on the bus or network can then be analyzed for producing a stand-alone implementation that mimics the same behaviour. This is especially good for reverse engineering of device drivers.
      2. Disassembly using a disassembler, meaning the raw machine language of the program is read and understood in its own terms, only with the aid of machine language mnemonics. This works on any computer program but can take quite some time, especially for someone not used to machine code.
      3. Decompilation using a decompiler, a process that tries, with varying result, to recreate the source code in some high level language for a program only available in machine code.

I suspect that methods 1 and 2 would have been most useful for the original xbox dvd filesystem.

If your filesystem is writable, you can try:

      1. Look at the volume with a hex editor
      2. Perform some operation, e.g. create a file
      3. Use the hex editor to look for changes
      4. Classify and document the changes
      5. Repeat steps 1-4 forever

(from The linux ntfs faq

Re:how?

[Kildjean]

That is why there are hackers and they are normal peeps... ;)

Re:how?

[dascandy]

- Take the file, determine (guess) the header size
- Note a bunch of values in hex, BCD and binary that could be useful. If it's an ancient Unix file, add octal notation. These things include the header size guess, the file size, a guess of an average content size etc.
- Guess what the values could mean, taking note of offsets.
- Try to fish out stuff behind the header by looking at repetitions, and determine block structure for those blocks. Determine how to find them from the header (jumping through headers, constant offset, encoded offset)
- When you can't find a direct relation, try with a constant offset from the found address. Microsoft (yep, I've been doing some myself in the past) used to love a 20 byte offset in the pointers.
- Deconstruct the entire file that way, recursively
- Know existing filetypes, preferably by heart. When you see 0xFF 0xC0, you should know that it's possibly a JPEG header. Same for text "GIF89a", bitmap headers and so on. For Microsoft embedded JPEGs, also expect 0xFF 0xD1 and RGB encoded JPG's (yes, that's horror. All things that may be named .jpeg are actually JFIF files, which requires CMY encoding).
- Write down your guesses multiple times, use markers and a laser printer, and don't mind the looks on your co-workers if they see you pondering over a hex output for over an hour.

Re:how?

[e03179]

It's Microsoft, so they would probably use a file system along the lines of one they already use, like FAT or NTFS.

Actually, it has been confirmed that Microsoft used the FAT360 file system.

Re:how?

[necro2607]

The XDK (Xbox Developers' Kit) is "out there" and not very hard to obtain. It has huge amounts of documentation on developing for the Xbox, and at the same time a pretty decent amount of filesystem info.

Also the Xbox filesystem is very very similar to FAT32 (or was it NTFS? I forget which now), as people snooping at the systems quickly determined. It's easy to look for signature filesystem footprints and so on using various handy filesystem tools :)

Re:how?

[necro2607]

Yeah those 5 steps are pretty much what you do if you want to reverse engineer a networking protocol, too. Do various actions and watch the TCP stream. Change one property and see how that affects the data. Before long you start to get a picture of how the protocol functions and you start getting some real progress. :) Then you can write up your own 3rd party software to interface with the protocol's native software. In fact that's how most "proxy" cheat programs work for games like WoW, Quake, CS, etc... they interpret the network stream and actually become part of the networking process, entering their own data or manipulating the existing data stream.

Wrong bet...

[halleluja]

Darn. I voted for FAT12!

Re:Wrong bet...

[kerplunk1984]

i voted for fat360

Re:Wrong bet...

[tolkienfan]

I voted for JFS

Important to Note

[MeanderingMind]

The article notes that this in an of itself is only a step in the long march towards all those crazy things people have done with the original Xbox.

An important step, but only a step.

Don't get too excited, it will be a few months yet before any underworld homebrew applications are running.

Re:Important to Note

[spicydragonz]

I can't wait for a beowulf cluster of XBox 360s to take over the world!

Re:Important to Note

[hoshino]

And a few hours that before you can rip 360 discs to your Xbox HD and play off the ISO file directly.

Re:Important to Note

[Lauritz]

My guess is that the ps3 will have come out, including a linux devkit, before the xbox360 is broken so much that it is usefull.

Re:Important to Note

[CastrTroy]

Yeah, the xbox may store its games in this format, but it must be able to read the standard DVD file system if it is to play DVD movies. I'm sure if a mod chip comes out, it will have the ability to transfer the files to your computer over the wireless network, and play games off standard DVDs

Re:Important to Note

[Yst]

The article notes that this in an of itself is only a step in the long march towards all those crazy things people have done with the original Xbox.

And if (as a worst case scenario) attempts to impliment NTFS5 under Linux are any example of just how incredibly nuanced the implimentation of a file system can be (though a very different case, obviously), one is compelled to observe that understanding the basics of a file system can be just one step on an absurdly long path towards fuller support and exposure of all the finer details.

Re:Important to Note

[wild_berry]

If only you could swap the HDD for one of a respectable size: the 20GB disk supplied at the moment can't hold more than three 4.7 GB DVD's. I also suspect that ISO isn't the correct terminology for an XBOX 306 disk image...

Re:Important to Note

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't wait for a beowulf cluster of XBox 360s to take over the world!

If by "take over" you mean "melt", then yeah, I can't wait either.

Re:Important to Note

[The Warlock]

.bin/.cue, then, although the term ISO is so ubiquidious that people use it even when there's more than one track on the disc.

Tape does it again

[rharder]

It turns out the DRM was stimied by putting electrical tape on the disc.

Oh come on now.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sure the Register can handle a slashdotting.

What's with this 404 error?

Owww arr Bill Gates...

[Anonymous Coward]

Excuse me but Mr Gates is not stupid.

Piracy sells consoles which in turn sells games = market share.

He wants people to pirate games, simple as.

Re:Owww arr Bill Gates...

[Obvius]

Not if they're selling the consoles at a loss to recoup the investment on games.

Re:Owww arr Bill Gates...

[dreamchaser]

How would selling something at a loss help to offset investment? They sell it at a loss in order to spur sales, so they can sell the games. The money is made from the games, and that profit is what recoups the investment.

Sure, I guess you could say 'Well if they gave it away for free they'd recoup that much less', but the point is that they do not sell them at a loss in order to recoup anything. It is to drive sales, plain and simple.

Re:Owww arr Bill Gates...

[bob2cam]

Absolutely. Piracy helps keep the Penquin from soaring with the eagle and X-Box will eventually take the market lead.

Re:Owww arr Bill Gates...

[Obvius]

Well that was my point entirely, I'm sorry if it didn't come across that way. Why encourage piracy when the investment is recouped through sales of games?

Re:Owww arr Bill Gates...

[Anonymous Coward]

But why would you buy the games if you can pirate them for free?

Re:Owww arr Bill Gates...

[Carrot007]

Casual Piracy.

the hardcore pirate would only buy the system if it is cracked, they would never buy any games.

However cracking the system still could sell more games though casual piracy. If someone knows the machine is cracked they may have more incentive to get it. Average joe however might only occasionally get pirate games off someone he knows so therefore may still actually buy games. Several people with cracked xbox 1's fall into this catagory. They have a lot of copies and a lot of originals.

Me I'll stick to my PC for gaming.

Re:Owww arr Bill Gates...

[mastertigurius]

Considering that Microsoft lost money for each and every Xbox-console they sold, and the fact that most people who chip their console choose to download games, I'd say that Mr.Gates doesn't like the pirates very much.

Does anyone know approximately how many percent of the sold Xboxes that have been chipped?

Re:Owww arr Bill Gates...

[Kildjean]

Everytime he sells a console he looses $100 bucks.... if people buy the console, but dont buy the game he is loosing money BIGTIME. Do your math now...

Re:Owww arr Bill Gates...

[Virtualtaco]

I used to agree with you. Then I thought about it. Piracy may push up console sales a litte bit in internet culture, but the internet culture (namely console hacking website users) no longer holds majority on who buys consoles. The 360 was unveiled on MTV! It doesn't get more mainstream. If piracy boosts sales, why has no EASILY hackable system been successful ever? Bottem line, software makes money, any software being run on a videogame system that you are not trading money for is software that these companies don't want run on your system. If you use my system, you run my software, and you give me money for it. That's how they think.

Re:Owww arr Bill Gates...

[Anonymous Coward]

loose, adj. Not fastened, restrained, or contained.

lose, v. tr. To be unsuccessful in retaining possession of; mislay.

Know the difference!

Re:Owww arr Bill Gates...

[Pneuma ROCKS]

There will always be people who will want to purchase the original games, be it because they don't condone piracy, or they like the art on the booklet and DVD, they don't have the time/skill/balls to mod their system, or simply because they like having the original better. Mass distribution of games, even pirated ones, increase the popularity of both the games and console. Otherwise, more sophisticated and probably user unfriendly ways of protecting content would be implemented.

Re:Owww arr Bill Gates...

[HaydnH]

If piracy boosts sales, why has no EASILY hackable system been successful ever?

The PC game market is very "hackable" and there's loads of piracy - correct me if I'm wrong but this market seems very successful!

Re:Owww arr Bill Gates...

[Kildjean]

I have a modded Xbox, reason i modded it was to take my games to lanparty's and not bohther about loosing the cd's. My point is that regardless how much piracy can make a product stand, it cn also take a product down. Microsoft sells 1,000,000 consoles but they loose 100 bucks in that, you know how much money that is?that is 100 million bucks lost. Im sure if you were in the other end of the desk, you would have a stroke by now. Hey if everyone wants to piate games go right ahead... but dont tel me that because you pirate something the industry gets any richer. Until Microsoft or Sony or Nintendo, make a console where they at least make .01 cents (at least) they are loosing if we dont buy their games. If we pirate the games they dont win anything....

Re:Owww arr Bill Gates...

[Anonymous Coward]

Even if the consoles are sold at a loss Microsoft is hoping to be in the centre of all livingrooms in the world.

What would you prefer; being able to sell you console with a profit or later be able to market something to several millions of people? Services? Games? Media?

Re:Owww arr Bill Gates...

[Anonymous Coward]

Volume, volume, volume

Re:Owww arr Bill Gates...

[blincoln]

Average joe however might only occasionally get pirate games off someone he knows so therefore may still actually buy games.

This is a creature I have never met. Everyone I know who pirates games talks about "buying the ones that are good enough," but none of them actually do it. As soon as the technology exists to bootleg games, they do so exclusively.

I know for a fact that this is what put a lot of developers off of the PS1 before it was commercially dead. I wouldn't be surprised if it was a significant factor in the end of the Dreamcast as well.

Re:Owww arr Bill Gates...

[ichigo 2.0]

Piracy sells consoles which in turn sells games

I don't think piracy means what you think it means...


Unless you're actually suggesting a shipful of pirates and their activities, in which case I have a nice graph for you here.

Re:Owww arr Bill Gates...

[corellon13]

Bear with me as I think this is relevant to MS and selling consoles at a loss. I work in the auto industry. We sell certain model vehicles (as do the other big 3 American auto makers) at a loss (around $1000 or more per sale). Why do we do this? Well, a big part of it is market share. The financing wizards have determined that it is less costly to lose money on each vehicle we sell, than to have our customers go to another auto maker. MS is very business savy, and I wouldn't doubt if they were doing something similiar. By selling the consoles at a loss, they can keep market share and even increase it by taking market share away from others (i.e. Sony and Nintendo). So, I think you are right about market share but the games are not the cause of market share as much as first getting you the console. The games is where they can try to recoup their profit, just as auto makers do with after market parts. I just thought this perspective might be worth while to share given this thread.

Re:Owww arr Bill Gates...

[xtieburn]

Got any evidence that piracy has ever really helped?

The PS1 is the only console to have claims like that made about it and to be honest theres better arguments for it succeeding than piracy.

There is nothing nothing to suggest piracy makes money for console makers and more importantly nothing to suggest MS is playing towards that idea.

Re:Owww arr Bill Gates...

[Firethorn]

From my understanding from reading reports, you're probably selling them at a profit, for the raw per-unit cost of the car(the cost to produce 1 more car in the factory), it's just that the big three have huge overheads that add up to better than a $1000 per car.

I read that the overhead from pensions and benefits for retired workers from GM is something like $800 per car sold. Worse, it's a static cost, so if you sell less cars, it goes up. If you can sell more cars, it'd go down, but competition from companies without those costs make it difficult.

Re:Owww arr Bill Gates...

[Virtualtaco]

If by very successful you mean maybe 10 games out of 200 a year breaking even, maybe. Then sure, a great success. The most successful PC games are the unpiratable games, namely WOW, Guild Wars, Etc.

Re:Owww arr Bill Gates...

[Anonymous Coward]

THAN
1. used to join two parts of a comparison:
My son is a lot taller than my daughter.
You always walk faster than I do!
You're earlier than usual.

2. used with 'more' or 'less' to compare numbers or amounts:
I spent more than I intended to.
It cost less than I expected.

THEN
(Time)
(at) that time (in the past or in the future):
I was working in the city then.
FORMAL I wanted to live in the city, but my then husband (= the man who was my husband at that time) preferred the country.
Give it to me next week - I won't have time to read it before/until then.
I'll phone you tomorrow - I should have the details by then.
(Next)
next or after that:
Let me finish this job, then we'll go.
Give her the letter to read, then she'll understand.
(In Addition)
in addition:
This is the standard model, then there's the deluxe version which costs more.
(Result)
as a result; in that case; also used as a way of joining a statement to an earlier piece of conversation:
Have a rest now, then you won't be so tired this evening.
You'll be selling your house, then?

Re:Owww arr Bill Gates...

[damsa]

It's the same reason why MS gives away Internet Explorer, to squash competition. Once all competition is gone, they are free to charge monopoly prices.

Re:Owww arr Bill Gates...

[dreamchaser]

Not really in this case. It is common practice for console vendors to sell at or below cost, for reasons I already mentioned (i.e., game sales)

Re:Owww arr Bill Gates...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep, that "plan" sure did wonders for the Dreamcast......

huh?

[the computer guy nex]

"Don't get too excited, it will be a few months yet before any underworld homebrew applications are running."

The first xbox took about a year for the first mod chips. Right now people are doing the easy part and deciphering how everything runs.

The hard part is how to get unauthorized code to run. This part involves bypassing systems bios and installing a compatible version over the top that the system cannot detect. This could take a few years.

Re:huh?

[DrXym]

The hard part is how to get unauthorized code to run. This part involves bypassing systems bios and installing a compatible version over the top that the system cannot detect. This could take a few years.

And if MS have learnt anything from the likes of the PSP (as they undoubtedly have). Any exploit will be quickly patched, either when you install a new game or next go online.

Re:huh?

[poind3xt3r]

Perhaps this is bills tactic? Release XBOX360 a year before PS3. By the time PS3 hits 360 will be "cracked" (hoefully) -> Surge in 360 sales -> Death of Sony. Just a shot-in-the-dark

Re:huh?

[Jarlsberg]

It may be Sony that learned from MS, seeing as this is how the original Xbox has operated since day one. You can't update modded xboxes that are locked against updates. You can, however, deny them access to Live, which is exactly what MS did.

Re:huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

"cracked" (hoefully)

Can you dislose the procedure for opening a XBox360 with a hoe? Inquiring minds want to know...

Re:huh?

[quanticle]

Release XBOX360 a year before PS3. By the time PS3 hits 360 will be "cracked" (hoefully) -> Surge in 360 sales -> Death of Sony.

Except for the fact that Microsoft is taking ~$100 loss on every XBox sold. They are relying on games to recoup that loss. Since having a cracked system presumably allows you to play cracked games, I expect Microsoft to be coming down on these hardware mods in order to prevent proliferation of cracked games.

Re:huh?

[systemic chaos]

I've never understood how you people play these cracked discs. Really, I get one damn scratch on my copy of GT3 and it's back to the Sentra parked in my driveway for me.

Re:huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't think it will be that easy, Microsoft has learned from their previous XB1 security blunder - and this time they do not even trust data running on the internal hardware bus.

Executable data is hashed and signed using asymmetrical keys built into the different hardware components (gpu, cpu etc). As each console has different keys "burned in", compromising one machine will mean nothing for the others!

Even if you use your electron microscope to compromise the keys of all your hardware components, using normal "man in the middle" code-injection (as mod-chips usually do) will be hard.

So there you have it ... Unless they have screwed up completely by leaving keys readable - this might actually be the first non-hackable console.

That doesn't prevent piracy of course, Chinese Entrepreneurs will line up to duplicate optical copies in about 3 seconds :)

Re:huh?

[MilenCent]

And if MS have learnt anything from the likes of the PSP (as they undoubtedly have). Any exploit will be quickly patched, either when you install a new game or next go online.

Ah, but that mechanism itself, if insecure, can be just the hole hackers need to get their code in just the right places....

Re:huh?

[poind3xt3r]

i meant "hopefully". sory for the bad speling :-)

Re:huh?

[DroopyStonx]

Erm.... few years? I think you people overestimate copy-protection.

It doesn't take a rare person like Einstein to figure out a way to bypass copy protection and figure out the inner workings of the system.

Nothing is uncrackable, and when enough people are working to figure something out, it won't take long. Mod chip manufacturers made a TON of money from last gen consoles, so they have engineers working on this already. Not to mention all the people that DO have the experitise to figure this out and start their own ways of profiting.

It all boils down to the same fundamental level of authentication, no matter what hardware or methods of "uncrackable genius" you use to delay the inevitable.

If anything, there's much more attention focused on finding a mod for this than there ever was for the first. Expect a mod chip out sometime in the next 6 months.

Re:huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

i'm sorry, but it did not take a year for xbox1 modchips to come out, the first xbox1 modchip (NEO-X) came out in late april 2002, ~6 months after the xbox came out
the NEO-X wasnt actually sold to the general public, but the Xtender came out in early may 2002, see this link

Re:huh?

[quanticle]

Actually, that's the other advantage having a "cracked" XBox is supposed to give you: the ability to play games off the hard drive.

neato

[Anonymous Coward]

so...they have gotten past the protections ? isnt that the most important part anyway ?

Am i missing something or does that not mean that a mod chip is imminent ? Increased power and the ability the do stuff i want to ? well, this can only mean good news for the xbox 360 sales.

make better games that gamers want and the games sell too , now that the consoles are bought anyways...

Re:neato

[matth1jd]

Copy protections on the discs themselves is just one part of the much larger puzzle. As someone pointed out earlier you have to be able to get unsigned code to run on the machine. While this was fairly easy to accomplish on the original Xbox, the Xbox 360 is supposed to be a trusted computing platform. It looks as though there's alot to overcome in getting unsigned code to run.

You can checkout Xbox Scene, or Free60.org for information.

Re:neato

[dioscaido]

Well, apparently the CPU contains hardware for the "trusted computing platform" on-die which restricts what the CPU will allow to execute. So writing on the disk is probably the easy part.

Re:neato

[smoker2]

the Xbox 360 is supposed to be a trusted computing platform. It looks as though there's alot to overcome in getting unsigned code to run.

But I would rather somebody show it can be done, asap, ie. before it gets built in to my next set of pc components.

Encryption?

[Mattygfunk1]

Will this mean that if processor and read latency speeds are acceptible, that the file system could be encrypted in future versions?

__
Adult Funny Video Clips from Laugh Daily

Re:Encryption?

[SigILL]

From TFA I understood that that was already the case. But if it isn't, then yeah, sure, why not?

Re:Encryption?

[LiquidCoooled]

You would still have to encrypt the disk in discreet little chunks because you certainly wouldn't want to read and decrpyt the entire contents in one go and decrypt it all just so you can view a track listing.
There must be some structure to these discreet blocks, so even if you cannot get the contents within, you can hand these blocks onto a secondary team who can attack the algorythm.

Once you realise this and the fact the key MUST be stored either somewhere on the disk, or on the player itself (else how would it know how to decrypt it..) the decryption comes something like deCSS, ie painless.

I'm quite certain encrypted drives are only a real problem if the key is user set.

Re:Encryption?

[z0idberg]

If the processor and memory were capable of fast enough encryption/decryption then you are sacrificing gains in performance in other areas.

e.g. if the next X-Box generation has the next generation chips/memory/architecture but the games perform only as well as the last X-Box because it uses all those advances to encrypt/decrypt the file system would you buy it? and if so why?!?

Re:Encryption?

[cb0nd]

Hmmm, I'm no specialist, but would it be effective to use a scheme like that? how would it work?
I mean, the key to decrypt it must be inside the box anyway. In my humble ignorance I can only see that this would slow the process.

What I think that might work is a scheme that uses digital signature to block the execution of code. But then again, there would probably be a way to bypass it.

Anyway, for every guy thinking how to protect something, there are a thousand thinkin of breaking it.

Re:Encryption?

[Wikipedia]

Sweet! Just like DeCSS!

Re:Encryption?

[Anonymous Coward]

You can thank the hackers for that. If people did not copy games then the console manufactures would not have to implement encryption and copyprotection. I mean if you were Nintendo, Sony, Microsoft or Sega (in the past) would you reduce your consoles performance with DRM and encryption if you did not have to?

Re:Encryption?

[JerWah]

IBM already ships dedicated Crypto Processors on big platforms (i.e. Mainframe). I figure it will only be time before chip prices get low enough that folks can afford to do so on smaller platforms, eventually leading to game consoles. You figure this way the game processor can do it's thing and the crypto processor can be integrated into the read ahead/buffering subsystem of the IO.

Re:Encryption?

[StikyPad]

If I were Sony, MS, or Nintendo, I'd leave out DRM anyway, which would reduce the cost of my console and/or allow me to focus more on performance. It would probably become more popular because it lacked DRM. Any way you cut it, the majority of people are going to obtain legitimate copies of their games, and the people who are determined not to, won't.

Re:Encryption?

[theLOUDroom]

Will this mean that if processor and read latency speeds are acceptible, that the file system could be encrypted in future versions?

Great idea! This way, without the key, nobody will be able to boot their Xbox.
Wait that sounds like they're going to have to give you the key.... :)

This is why satellite TV boxes have smartcard readers on them. The issuse isn't one of hardware speed, but rather making it really freakin hard to pull the key out of the box.
You have to have somewhere to store the key that's orders of magnitude harder to get access to than the data you've encrypted. That's where you start spending millions of dollars.

i want linux on my xbox 360!!!

[claus.rosito]

let's bet how long does it take... my bet: in 6 months we will have it running.

just waiting for the mod chip

[PrescriptionWarning]

my preciousssssssss

Not again !

[4Dmonkey]

A reliable source from Pi 'research' group later told press repoters that minutes after removing the DRM encoding, 'researchers' were surprised to see that it resembled Dos 6.2 by almost 97.5%, except it occupied 548% more memory.

Re:Not again !

[Minwee]

"it resembled Dos 6.2 by almost 97.5%, except it occupied 548% more memory."

It's Windows 95?

Re:Not again !

[StikyPad]

97.5% is, coincidentally, the same amount of DNA that humans have in common with mice, and we occupy well over 548% more space.

Re:Uhh?

[timmerk15]

By the way, sorry for the link being on the same line.. it was suppose to be like a signature, but I guess slashdot removes '\n's. I should have used Preview :-)

Dosen't matter

[Big Bad Hoss]

Dosen't really matter, all of the content is still encrypted. It will take MUCH MUCH more time to crack it this time around. MS spent big bucks on the protection.

Re:Dosen't matter

[bots]

Well they better hurry up cause im not buying a 360 until they are easy to mod.

Re:Dosen't matter

[aeric67]

Sony spent big bucks on their protection too and a felt tip marker completely defeated it. Big buck does not equal big return.

Re:Uhh?

[Anonymous Coward]

Are the dev docs legally available without an NDA? Or were you just trying to get your spam link modded up?

Re:Uhh?

[timmerk15]

No, of course you need a NDA.. I'm just saying they can be "had" if you look hard enough. Same with the iPod dev NDA docs. Both are very interesting.

I hope not.

[Anonymous Coward]

I hope Microsoft finds an unbreakable piracy prevention system; one that completely stops pirated copies of Windows and Office; one that finaly forces everyone who wants to use Microsoft products to pay for them.

That day, and not before, will FOSS be on the path for 'World Domination': most people, when considering alternatives to Microsoft products, do not take into account license fees, because they have no intention to pay for them; as long as Windows / Office can be easily obtained for free, FOSS will be at a dissadvantage.

Re:I hope not.

[heinousjay]

Most people don't pirate things. Don't confuse your lack of morality for a general lack.

Re:I hope not.

[Anonymous Coward]

You must live in a boring country.

Re:I hope not.

[6*7]

I guess some place like Singapore that recently introduced the death penalty for copyright infringement.

Re:Uhh?

[BMonger]

Then why not put it in your signature? Just curious as I've noticed this has been becoming a smallish trend on /.

Parent Overrated

[Lord Byron II]

Why is the parent post modded at +5?? He's just trying to get ppl to sign up for a MLM scheme.

The console just got out....

[Kildjean]

Jesus, the console is barely a month old and you people are already thinking in doing something else with it? Could we enjoy it til January 2006 before you start contemplating doing OS changes, putting hamsters to roll on a cage, adding fish, dressing it as barbie to play "tea party"... ;)

Re:The console just got out....

[stunt_penguin]

Dude, people were champing at the bit to do this in May of this year, never mind this month. There'll always be a community out there that wants to do this stuff immediately, just because they can.

Re:The console just got out....

[Kildjean]

I know... :) I always check what they are doing... I think this is a great platform to do some great things... all this power... Imagine the shit they got done with the Xbox1, I can't wait to see what they will be able to do with this thing...

Re:The console just got out....

[randomaxe]

You've seen the list of launch titles, right?

This isn't finding something else to do with the console, it's finding something entertaining to do with it, period. There's only so much high-definition Shaq-sweat a man can watch before the novelty wears off.

Re:The console just got out....

[Kildjean]

The launch titles left a lot to be desired in some games.. I got PG3, NFSMW, PDZ, Q4. My GF got NFSMW, RR6 and COD2... Call of Duty 2 is sweet. We have also found ourselves wrapped up in the arcade games which some of them are plain addictive like Geometry Wars and Mutant Storm. The game I want is Oblivion. Cant wait till its out.

Re:The console just got out....

[Anonymous Coward]

Why not? My Barbie USB Drive would love a party!

The Real Deal

[Anonymous Coward]

Firstly, the Register article (and /. summary) is useless. They're just high-level summaries. The details (the meat, if you like) are here: http://www.xbox-scene.com/xbox1data/sep/EEFuplVllV IYuZHGfq.php

Now, for the problem. Team Pi have released an open-source extractor FOR THEIR ALREADY-DECODED IMAGES. They have NOT released an open-source decoder for turning DVDs into images.

Why is that? I believe they probably haven't fully reverse-engineered the encryption yet. They've just cracked the raw disk driver or some other part of the XBOX360 operating system, so that it performs the decryption for them (MS's code) and saves the result to hard disk.

Needless, it won't be long before there's a public utility to run on a hacked 360 or devkit that does the same thing, then eventually someone will do the hard part - fully reverse-engineering the encryption.

Fair use

[omeg]

Isn't dumping ISO files of your disks considered "fair use"?

Re:Fair use

[SQFreak]

Not if they're copy protected. Breaking copy protection is a violation of the DMCA.

Re:Fair use

[Kjella]

Q:Isn't dumping ISO files of your disks considered "fair use"?

A:Yes, it is. Which means you won't be sued for copyright infringement, you will only be charged with circumvention.

Q:But it's fair use???

A:Fair use is not a defense to circumvention.

Q:But how can I exercise my fair use rights then???

A:Fair use is not a right, it is an affirmative defense. So if you can't do it without breaking some other law, you can't.

Q:But... it's all copyright isn't it???

A:No. Even though it is called the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, only some of the paragraphs deal with copyright. Others deal with circumvention.

Q:So my fair use right are...?

A:Effectively gone, yes. Also you can't touch circumvention tools or talk about how to make one. Depressed yet?

Re:Fair use

[barawn]

A:Fair use is not a defense to circumvention.

Curiously, though, reverse engineering is. So apparently, you're allowed to circumvent the protection and extract the ISO if you claim you're working on reverse engineering the XBOX 360.

So when Microsoft comes yelling at you, apparently you can yell "dude, it's okay. I'm a hacker."

Nfo-file

[Anonymous Coward]

Here is a link to the nfo-file of the first dump http://www.nforce.nl/nfos/shownfoblack.php?nfoid=1 00322

same?

[Anonymous Coward]

it's not the same... everything has been rotated 360 degrees!

Think more evilly

[SmallFurryCreature]

Every x-box game played is not a PS2 game played. There is one tiny little difference between Sony/Nintendo and MS. MS doesn't need to make a profit on the x-box/360. With its cash cows windows and Office it can afford to loose money on an awfull lot of other product lines and has.

Why is MS in the console market in the first place? Lets not forget that the x-box is directly competing with MS own product windows. Yes windows is a game platform as well and MS itself produces games for that platform. Exclusive games even that are not available on consoles not even its own. They are still doing it now even with the arrival of the 360.

I think the entire reason is that MS is desperate to spread out its wings. Focussing on one or two key products wich make all your money leaves you incredibly vulnerable to changes. Bill Gates probably knows like nobody else how easy it is to replace the market leader in the Word processing/Spreadsheet market or even the OS market. You youngesters may not know this but there was a day when suggesting you buy MS for a business enviroment had roughly the same reaction as suggesting linux a few years ago.

One of MS dreams has been to get a share (the lionshare) of the mythical living room entertainment hub whatever that maybe. At the moment the PC usually stands in the corner if it isn't banned to the bedroom or some pokey hobbyroom. The Internet TV was one attempt at getting the PC into the living room. It bombed but the idea remained and the very popular consoles are now being seen as the next battleground as to who will control the living room.

iTunes if anything has proven that there is a point. How many people here run iTunes because they bought an iPod? Would you have used iTunes if you bought say a Zen instead? Might it be possible that if you owned the living room entertainment center to then put something like iTunes on it and control the distribution of digital media into the living room? Can you say commercial wetdream?

The x-box was not an attempt to beat sony at making a good game console. It was an attempt to control peoples entertainment. The 360 is the same. The battle is on for who own the living room PC, the desktop PC has been won. Why do you think Sony actually sold a linux extension to their PS2? Because they are such nice people who like the whole opensource movement? Or because they are experimenting with turning their game consoles into a more PC like device.

I seen rumours about the PS3 actually running linux as either its core operating OS or at least being capable of doing so for certain tasks. If you look at the design of the cell processor it certainly seems designed far more for multitasking, essential for a desktop not for gaming.

What would happen if people actually could really surf the net (or better a subset of the net filled with your own sales channels) and everything else via their entertainment center? Oh I am not talking about people here but those people who have only got an old virus and spyware laden 98 15" CRT machine in the bedroom and a shiny new PS3/360 in their living room hooked up the a widescreen HD. It certainly seems to have MS worried that it might not be their logo on the software.

So MS doesn't care about profits. Yet. It cares about nobody but them owning this "new" market. Wether they are right or not and wether they succeed or not does not matter. They believe it is a battle to be fought same as for the Internet TV and same as with PDA's and same as with Mobile Phones. Internet TV bombed all around, PDA's MS sorta kinda won and mobile phones is unique because the phone makers do NOT want MS to muzzle in on their business.

Sony too must be smart enough to realize that MS is its true enemy, nintendo is just a competitor but MS is out to destroy it. But sony despite having a far wider customer base then MS is doing very badly. Some people even suggest that the PS2 might have won in sales numbers but it just hasn't made Sony the kind of money it needs.

So MS has the simple opti

Re:Uhh?

[richardablitt]

Might be for the benefit of those who turn off signatures.

Dumb & Duper

[Anonymous Coward]

It's amazing, like any other clueless readers, the register didn't even bother to read the nfos :

source code for a utility that allows discs' files to be extracted and displayed as raw data.

The utility runs on a PC, apparently, but Xbox 360 DVDs are incompatible with PC DVD drives.

No, the utility released can't dump the content of 360 discs to HDD,
the utility can extract the *files* from the disc *dumps*.

Pi released this utility *AND* full raw dumps of 360 discs.
But the method for dumping discs was *NOT* disclosed.
They released this utility so that you can actually DO something with those dumps: you can extract the files on your pc hdd and fiddle with them...

What's funny is that they wanted to put 'RAW' somewhere, as the dumps are raw images, but i assume they put it randomly in their article..

BTW, this was previously covered on slahdot and the most dumb^H^H^H^Hcomplete thread is at xbox-scene

The whole concept of protection is flawed

[DrYak]

Except this kind of protection is completly wrong, no matter how much buck you throw at it.
- It's the same as with DVD, etc. : You've got the content, the decryption key and everything required in the same place.
Data may be encrypted in an Xbox, but ultimately, the XBox has to start-up, decrypt, and run decrypted code.
The content virtually exist in an unencrypted form.

Good protection relies on secret.
When you transmit encrypted e-mails they are much more secure because an encrypted e-mail per-se doesn't contain everything needed to decrypt it. The XBox does.

This is only "traing to keep things hidden from user" and is pointless.
It'll get cracked, no matter how much bucks MS spent on it.

Unless XBoxes where to commit suicide and nuke the whole place if they find the slighest error (errors likely to show that somone is reverse-engeneering and trying to feed constructed data to see reaction), it's hard for Microsoft to stop anyone with decent tools to try to reverse-engeneer their conoles.

Re:The whole concept of protection is flawed

[amliebsch]

it's hard for Microsoft to stop anyone with decent tools to try to reverse-engeneer their conoles.

Decent tools like an electron microscope? Because if the key is a per-unit unique key burned into the on-die ROM, that's what you would need. For each and every box.

Re:The whole concept of protection is flawed

[Pollardito]

if a per unit unique key was being used, wouldn't you have to buy a copy of a game that's encrypted for your unit?

Re:The whole concept of protection is flawed

[Kjella]

Unless XBoxes where to commit suicide and nuke the whole place if they find the slighest error (errors likely to show that somone is reverse-engeneering and trying to feed constructed data to see reaction), it's hard for Microsoft to stop anyone with decent tools to try to reverse-engeneer their conoles.

Actually, any attempt to feed it constructed data should fail. Everything is signed upwards right down to the master TCPA key. The TCPA chip will commit suicide and nuke itself if it is tampered with. Without it, you shouldn't be able to make any other code run. "Decent tools", if done properly, is an electron microscope and a looooooot of time to go chasing ghosts. In addition, if you find an exploit in a game, the hypervisor is supposed to act as a sandbox and prevent a "slight error" from being able to do anything significant with it. Not that you would be able to overwrite the TCPA chip from within the game anyway. XBox was a slightly modified PC. This is a purebreed TCPA system designed to be tamper-proof. Getting information out of the system is still quite doable, but feed it information back... that is going to be extremely difficult.

Re:The whole concept of protection is flawed

[b1t r0t]

The presumed per-unit key is only for accessing the BIOS. This prevents chip mods.

The games are digitally signed, and the console only knows the public key, refusing to run games that were not signed with the private key. Without using "sploits", this is pretty much unbreakable without someone finding the key. The Atari 7800, Lynx, and Jaguar keys were found by dumpster diving around a dying Atari; the 3DO key is still not publically known.

When the 360 gets broken, it will surely be through sploits. And then MS's plan is probably to "upgrade" systems over Live, and maybe even by games offering an upgrade and requiring it to play, like with the PSP. Whether the closing of the holes will work remains to be seen.

Re:The whole concept of protection is flawed

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe they could do it like the Nintendo DS hack - boot with a signed disc then switch to the unsigned code.

Re:The whole concept of protection is flawed

[Anonymous Coward]

The key is inside CPU now. Unless you have some Microscope and find it in billions of transitors, no way can you get it.

Re:The whole concept of protection is flawed

[DrYak]

This is a purebreed TCPA system designed to be tamper-proof {...} that is going to be extremely difficult

I'm specially agreeing with your last sentence : "difficult". But not "impossible".
Yes, the XBox360 looks a lot better than the XBox.

How many supposed fool proof system have we seen before ?
- Starforce was supposed to be the ultimate piracy prevention tool : per game key, un-replicable physical disc caracteristics as part of the key, detection of virtual drives. Yet now we see stuffs like StarFuck.

It'll be difficult but this system will be cracked. Be it exploiting a stupid bug in the hypervisor nobody saw before. Be it using some hidden proprietary JTAG debuging port. Be it recovering the key in a garbage can.
There's not such thing as a 100% secure system. There's only difference between "utterly stupid design" and "good try at keeping stuff protected".

Maybe it'll be a lot harder with x360, but not impossible.

On the other hand this is comming from the company responsible for wonderful creation like Windows Me, Outlook, ActiveX, ...

Authors in violation of the DMCA and

[crovira]

can expect the FBI on their doorstep for violating trade secrets.

A representative said:

  "Users don't need to know the details."
  "This was clearly done by terrorists and hackers."
  "We will find you, and we w_i_l_l kill you"

That all she wrote. :-)

Re:Authors in violation of the DMCA and

[thebigmacd]

You can only violate trade secrets if you are authorized to know the info and you leak it, or if you steal the info and leak it. If you figure it out on your own, only the DMCA has effect. No?

XBox "Live" Watchdog???

[UttBuggly]

I wonder if the 360 sends any "help me, I've been raped and pillaged" data to XBox Live?

At which point your $400-1000 console goes tits up.

MS certainly knows how people got inside the original XBox and it seems EVERY 360 game, multiplayer or not, "reports" scores and achievements to Live.

Seems like a cool feature and all, but it could very well be some crafty social engineering.

Given Sony's recent rootkit debacle, it isn't too much of stretch to believe Uncle Bill had the boys put in a "phone home and tattle" capability.

Re:XBox "Live" Watchdog???

[SteveXE]

You can...

a) Shut off the automatic connection to Xbox Live
b) Block a connection to XBL from your router
c) Unplug the ethernet cord

Not too hard

Re:XBox "Live" Watchdog???

[TheSpoom]

Any sort of "remote destroy" code that could be sent through an online service would make me seriously question the designers of the service and the console. What happens if someone cracks the network and broadcasts the code to all connected hosts? The results would scare even the most DRM-happy business person.

Re:XBox "Live" Watchdog???

[UttBuggly]

Well, of course, but that's where the social engineering comes in.

Some people will so want their names/scores "up in lights", they'll ignore the fact that ET is phoning home.

Re:XBox "Live" Watchdog???

[UttBuggly]

I don't think it would "remote destroy" so much as void the warranty, put you on a Homeland Security watchlist, and generate an IRS audit of your entire life.

Re:XBox "Live" Watchdog???

[Perey]

This might be a problem once ordinary users start modding their 360s, but I don't think the reverse engineering wizards would be foolish enough to allow the device a phone-home line while tinkering with it. (I haven't heard that the Xbox 360 NEEDS an Xbox Live connection to use; am I wrong?)

Re:XBox "Live" Watchdog???

[NetJunkie]

You couldn't put a hacked XBox (with the chip on) on to Live before, and you won't now. Most people that wanted to play on Live ended up with two XBoxes. I had one for Live and one for things like XBMC. Some people just disabled their chip when they went online..but mine got banned on the first wave.

Re:Obviously Slashdot again is a bunch of n00bs

[mc900ftjesus]

Over half of the launch titles are sequels or updated sports titles, I guess your definition of quality means better eye candy. My definition is innovative gameplay, not better tackling animations or race cars that show damage or a new better looking shotgun.

In a few years, you'll get tired of the "Hollywood" flash-over-substance model and you'll say the same thing. But hey, enjoy your underclocked Radeon and the avalanche of sequels at $60/each.

I may just be me but...

[Nom du Keyboard]

It may just be me, but once you Buy something you ought to be able to do with it as you wish. Restrictions on use after the first sale are often not legal (if they were, all the gun companies would all have EULA's stating you are not allowed to commit a crime with their product), and any attempts to enforce any such behavior should immediately be thrown out of court.

Re:I may just be me but...

[Anonymous Coward]

Your example is flawed. To have a EULA saying you can't commit a crime with a product would be redundant. You can never commit a crime with a product, EULA or not, because it is by definition, a crime. So you would have to prosecute someone, then turn around and slap breaking the EULA on them... Don't think so buddy.

Re:I may just be me but...

[Nom du Keyboard]

Your example is flawed. To have a EULA saying you can't commit a crime...So you would have to prosecute someone, then turn around and slap breaking the EULA on them... Don't think so buddy.

I think you're the one who has it wrong. This has nothing to do with proscution, but rather the liability. Microsoft can't actually stop you from disassembling you XBox down to its 1700 components, and then rebuilding it completely upside down if you wish. And if you mod your XBox in your home, they can't come in and take it away from you while slapping your hands in the process.

However if they can remotely detect the modification they can keep you out of XBox Live and you can't sue them for it. And they can go after you if you try to sell modded XBoxes on eBay (which they shouldn't be able to do either, but expect it to happen). And you can't claim illegal interfearence in your personal dealings because of their EULA.

It's the same way Apple couldn't prevent people from cracking open the first sealed Macs. But they would refuse to service them afterwards, and refuse to sell parts to others who might service them. Legal? You decide.

Re:I may just be me but...

[Blakey Rat]

It's worth it if it keeps cheaters off Live. IMO.

Yes, I care more about people cheating in online games than I do about "software freedom."

Re:I may just be me but...

[Koatdus]

It may just be me, but once you Buy something you ought to be able to do with it as you wish.

The key word here is ought. I agree with you that once I buy something it ought to be mine to do with as I please. The same way I feel that the trees and buildings sitting on my property are mine to do with as I please. (why is it always OUR trees when they are on someone else's property)

However, there are several companys and more then a few politicians that don't seem to feel the same way.

The worst part of is that by making such stupid, unpopular, and unenforcable laws they destroy respect for the law. Face it, most people really don't think that it is wrong to copy media that they have purchased. If they really think about it they may agree that it is wrong to give out copies but if it is "just a copy for their friend" they can rationalize it as not really doing any harm. "After all they payed for it once, and the record companys have more money then GOD anyway..."

The result is that they have deceided not to respect or obey that law. From there it becomes easier to pick and choose which laws to obey and which to break.

The end result is a general breakdown in respect for the law. People no longer feel that they are "UNDER" the law but that they are equal to it and have the right to choose which laws to obey and which to disobey.

Someone with an agenda then steps in and more stupid laws are passed. (see hate crimes... the crime is beating someone up, and you SHOULD be punished for it, not what you thought about while you were doing it)

Soon we get to the point we are at now where most of us are technically criminals and will break any "minor/stupid" law as long as we think we won't get caught. More and more lawyers are needed to keep from getting caught and there is no longer any right or wrong. Caos in the streets, dogs and cats sleeping together, ....

I don't know what the best solution is.

I suspect that it may be to wipe most of the laws off of the books and start over with a simpler set that has some kind of rational structure to it. (Good luck trying to get people to agree on what that structure is.)

Re:I may just be me but...

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, you can buy an Xbox 360 that you can run whatever you wish to. It's called a devkit. And it'll cost you about $20k.

The retail version that you find at your local game store is sold at a loss, with the implied agreement that you will buy games for it, so they can make back thier money.

Once you circumvent the protection, you are undermining thier ability to make back thier money from games, so it is in thier interest to keep thier copy protection intact.

Re:I may just be me but...

[fishbowl]

>The retail version that you find at your local game store is sold at a loss

That idea has LONG legs, but it seems to originate from a fairly biased source.

Re:I may just be me but...

[fishbowl]

"It may just be me, but once you Buy something you ought to be able to do with it as you wish."

You can. What you do with your XBox in the privacy of your home is nobody's business but your own, and the law is fully on your side. What is it that you believe you are prevented from doing?

Re:I may just be me but...

[SirPavlova]

The end result is a general breakdown in respect for the law. People no longer feel that they are "UNDER" the law but that they are equal to it and have the right to choose which laws to obey and which to disobey.

I've got to admit, I feel that way. It's not just a general "I can do what I want" attitude, but more of a "This is stupid, STFU n00b!" one. If that makes any sense. When the law loses people's respect, there's a faint possibility that rather than the people being disrespectful louts, the law doesn't deserve said respect, though the reverse could also be true.

Soon we get to the point we are at now where most of us are technically criminals and will break any "minor/stupid" law as long as we think we won't get caught. More and more lawyers are needed to keep from getting caught and there is no longer any right or wrong.

There's still right & wrong, it's just that they no longer line up with the law. That's the whole reason the law loses the respect it used to have.

Sheesh... reading this over, it makes me sound like some 15 year old wannabe rebel, fighting the man & all that crap :(

Jehovah!

[Anonymous Coward]

The word "unbreakable" should not be used anymore. (Only liars from marketing departments use it :-)

You have just used it.

Re:Jehovah!

[komeedipoeg]

so in the future we should avid the "u" word

Re:Obviously Slashdot again is a bunch of n00bs

[darthtom]

The man's right. There's a reason why so many people are _still_ getting good use out of Super Nintendos (or SNES9x...). I have _yet_ to find a game that's given me as much satisfaction as Chrono Trigger or Final Fantasy 3 (VI).

loss?

[jesterpilot]

You sure they sell at a loss? Or do they just sell with less profit?

Re:Obviously Slashdot again is a bunch of n00bs

[Anonymous Coward]

People don't seem to get that the titles out are luanch titles. CALL OF DUTY IS SPECTACULAR.... NFS is awesome the graphics blows away wwhat most peoples pcs can handle a xp2800 / x700 OC / 1gig ram lagged on this game were xbox360 is silky...... this is about a good gaming console not that little brats wanna pirate for it ...

Nothing New Here

[Anonymous Coward]

The xbox 360 dvd format is very similar to the original xbox format. There are a quite a few xbox hackers that know how to dump an xbox disc using a pc dvd-drive with a hacked firmware. The same method was used to dump the xbox dvds early on before the xbox1 was cracked completely. This isn't really news or very exciting. Wake me up when we have some type of unsigned code exceution on the xbox 360.

"standard"

[TeknoHog]

Standard xboxdvdfs, from the makers of Microsoft Works!-)

here's how.

[YesIAmAScript]

Well, in this case, it was very similar to the Xbox file system, so there was no work to do.

So, how was the Xbox file system decoded?

Well, in this case, someone pirated a copy of the MS tool GDFIMAGE. They could use that to make test file systems and reverse engineer those knowing exactly what was in them. But really, I don't think that they did either, they likely just disassembled GDFIMAGE. There have been replacement (presumably legal) tools for GDFIMAGE for some time now, as the original is copyrighted by MS and so sites won't post it.

It's all fruit of the contaminated tree, and a bit sad. It would have been nicer if it could have been done clean. But really, I think that's just a lack of resources from the community. They do things in their spare time and so do it in the most efficient way they can think of, instead of they way a lawyer would advise.

And I'm not holding something against the Xbox hacker/mod people, they're a very smart group of people and have done so much great work with the Xbox. Compare the Xbox mod and hacker scene to the PS2 one and you'll see the difference in results and even in organization.

Re:here's how.

[jabuzz]

Whether it is contaminated or not depends on where you live. For large chunks of the worlds population this would be perfectly legal.

ancient

[panic911]

wow, this happened last Thursday and every techy news page around had it up that day. Good to see that Slashdot is on top of things.

Re:ancient

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, you could have submitted the article when it was first up.

Death Penalty for copyright infringement?

[ardle]

Singapore recently introduced the death penalty for copyright infringement? Surely this is worthy of a Slashdot story?

Re:Uhh?

[BMonger]

That's the only thing I could think of but... if people don't desire to see signatures forcing it on them isn't really a benefit either... heh.

Thought Terrorist!

[bogie]

Get him!
.

Re:fp???

[Fussen]

No this is the fp.

..

Re: Selling consoles at a loss

[bitrot42]

>Not really in this case. It is common practice for console vendors to sell at or below cost, for reasons I already mentioned (i.e., game sales)

This is something I've never understood. Why isn't this considered 'dumping' or 'anti-competetive'? In other markets, it's considered illegal (especially when international trade is involved.)

It effectively kills competition from small companies that can't afford to take a $4 Billion hit to come in a distant second to Sony...

Let me know when...

[tHatDudeUK]

I can copy games with a DVD writer and run linux....

I don't particularly care about the file system :) ;)

how to implement a good DRM system...

[jonwil]

Basicly, you make it so that every machine instruction is decrypted as it is executed by the CPU (I know it has been done in the past for a number of arcade machines, some of which have been cracked because they used weak encryption and some of which have never been cracked)

If decrypting every instruction as it gets executed is too slow or otherwise unfesable(which I suspect to be the case), another answer is to encrypt the executable files on disk and decrypt them when they get read into main RAM. In this case, you could probobly use a public key algorithim like RSA. This would mean that unless the secret key (which only the manufacturer would have) is cracked, it would be pretty much impossible to write & run new code on retail boxes that hasnt been signed by the manufacturer.
If fesable, the decryption would be handled by a seperate CPU or ASIC containing the public key embedded in it. (making it much harder for anyone to obtain it and use that to decrypt executables themselves). Also, in order to prevent someone just disabling the encryption chips somehow and running code, part of the non-replacable firmware would also be encrypted and then it gets decrypted into RAM after an executable has been loaded (e.g. this would be some parts of the kernel and essential system calls that the games make)

Homebrew Apps

[themadplasterer]

There will be a homebrew app which will allow you to overheat the power supply even faster. "More Power!, ARGH! ARGH!"

Re:fp???

[Anonymous Coward]

No this is the fp.

DAMNIT! Beaten to it by just two people! Now how am I supposed to join some trolling group and get laid and such?

No different for Sony/Nintendo

[xswl0931]

You argue that MS can afford to lose money per X360 sold, but this is no different than Sony or Nintendo. You do realize that Sony is much more than just Playstation. Their consumer electronics, computer, movie, music businesses can more than carry any losses from their Playstation department. Similarly, if you look at Nintendo's most recent financial report, most of their profits have been from Gameboy and Pokemon, not Gamecube at all. Any smart business person is aware of diversification.

Re: Selling consoles at a loss

[StikyPad]

IANAL, but I think that it's only illegal when done to sustain a monopolistic position, or when done in collusion with "competitors," aka price fixing. As a result of natural competition, I don't think it's illegal.

XTAF filesystem

[Anonymous Coward]

looks as though the hard drive filesystem has also been hacked, see the free60's project web site: http://www.free60.org/wiki/Main_Page, someone care to submit this as a story? i'm to lazy to do so

Common Mistake...

[vwjeff]

(Only liars from marketing departments use it :-) I hate to point out mistakes in posts but this one was obvious. The above sentence should have been written as follows: Only marketing departments use it. This is a common mistake. It is generally accepted that marketing = lies.

ARGHHHH!

[mns]

The other day, I got a sledgehammer out and smashed my XBOX 360, in order to get inside it and retrieve the hard drive to use as a bookmark, and now MICROSOFT IS TOTALLY DISSING ME AND TAKING MY RIGHTS AWAY BY REFUSING TO PROVIDE FREE PHONE SUPPORT ON HOW TO GET IT TO WORK AS AN XBOX 360 AGAIN! Those FRIGGIN' NAZIS!