Hacking the Xbox

minuszero writes "BBC News is reporting that the hacker community has already begun to crack the Xbox 360 system. From the article: 'A group of crackers called Team PI Coder says it has discovered the basic workings of the console's file system. The information has helped the group dig out the raw data from the console for 13 Xbox 360 games.'" Relatedly, Mancomb Seepgood writes "Xbox-Linux have published a new paper 17 Mistakes Microsoft Made in the Xbox Security System, which will be presented at the 22nd Chaos Communication Congress in Germany. It details the history of efforts to crack the Xbox and highlights a number of mistakes Microsoft made, including not understanding basic cryptographic algorithms or reading Intel's CPU datasheets." This latter article focuses on the original console.

Comments

Re:Crackers?

[macshit]

Is the media confusing the difference between crackers and hackers again? Or is my understanding of the definitions out of date? (ie hackers = good, crackers = evil hackers)

It's just that the words have different accepted meanings in different contexts; there are no absolute "definitions".

Potentially confusing to be sure, but that's natural language for you (though in practice, of course, nobody actually gets confused over this issue; some people just like to use the unrealized possibility of confusion as an excuse to make their favorite rant).

I must be missing the point.

[KermodeBear]

I really think I must be. Microsoft put in some security measures on their console, and not all of them were top notch. Okay, that's a flaw in the design, but come on... This is a GAME CONSOLE. It plays games. These things aren't used to store credit card numbers.