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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.""
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.
apterous.org
Darn. I voted for FAT12!
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.
Thunderclone: ONE MAN ENTERS! TWO MEN LEAVE! ONE MAN ENTERS! TWO MEN LEAVE!
It turns out the DRM was stimied by putting electrical tape on the disc.
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
Well, I've got to get back to work. When I stop rowing, the slave ship just goes in circles.
It starts like 3.14...
Not if they're selling the consoles at a loss to recoup the investment on games.
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.
"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.
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
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.
Excuse my speling.
Making The Bar Project
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.
God created man in his own image, but somehow he evolved into a hairless monkey.
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.
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"... ;)
Nom de dieu de putain de bordel de merde de saloperie de connard d encule de ta mere.
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.
loose, adj. Not fastened, restrained, or contained.
lose, v. tr. To be unsuccessful in retaining possession of; mislay.
Know the difference!
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.
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
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Its probably becuase they only had 30 minutes at a time to work on it before it overheated ;)
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.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
I wonder if the 360 sends any "help me, I've been raped and pillaged" data to XBox Live?
At which point your $400-1000 console goes tits up.
MS certainly knows how people got inside the original XBox and it seems EVERY 360 game, multiplayer or not, "reports" scores and achievements to Live.
Seems like a cool feature and all, but it could very well be some crafty social engineering.
Given Sony's recent rootkit debacle, it isn't too much of stretch to believe Uncle Bill had the boys put in a "phone home and tattle" capability.
I am my own gestalt.
That was true for the original XBox which was based on PC-ish and off-the-shelf hardware. For the 360, it would be more like a souped-up Mac/(whatever else uses PPC chips).
Since the custom PPC and chipset/GPU for the 360 were tweaked specifically for M$ 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.
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).
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.
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?
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
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:
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.