Slashdot Mirror
360 Hackers Claim Full Read/Write Ability
Technology Sweden writes "According to the site Xbox-Scene, a program is available to transfer saved-games and more from the memory card or hard drive. This opens up a whole new world for the 360. Soon we might be able to run our own home brewed games and show our favourite Xvid movies."
What a lot of people are interested in will probably be the porting of older consoles through known emulators to the Xbox 360. I don't want an Xbox 360 but we'll see how well this development takes off. I long for an emulator that plays my old SNES games as it is kind of cumbersome to have many many systems to hook up. A fully functioning Link to the Past on Xbox 360 would make me buy it.
For those of you looking for free game ISOs to dump from the internet to your Xbox 360, this is not something that will allow this yet as from the article: So there's no free games yet. On top of that, you can't shell out the boot sequence from a disc to use it for launching your own homemade application. Hopefully we'll see that in a few more months. I myself am not really interested in "free" games, just want to be able to use my Xbox as a real toy instead of the confines of those who can afford the insane developer's license fee.
Anyone else notice that this article reads like an advertisement for 360gamesaves? There's three links to it.
My work here is dung.
This will be a day long remembered. It has seen the end of DRM, it will soon see the end of the rebellion.
I wonder how this news is seen in Microsoft's eyes?
1. A security flaw that needs to be analyzed and fixed in a possible firmware update.
2. A sign that players want a sort of "utilities" disc that allows them access to hardware in the machine. Much like the Linux kit that was made available for the PS2.
3. A possible idea to expand upon and a valuable tool for their developers to learn from.
4. Rest of the world? That doesn't exist inside Microsoft so this utility program actually was never written. We know what our customers want and that's that.
My work here is dung.
Soon we might be able to run our own home brewed games and show our favourite Xvid movies.
:-)
Which is to say that piracy of 360 downloadable games will soon flourish.
Are there really any examples of "homebrew" games for modern systems? Being as complex as they are to program, I don't really see why anyone would bother homebrewing a game on the 360 when they can produce the exact same software for the PC. (Much quicker and easier, too.)
I could see the possibility of turning the 360 into a PVR, but doesn't it seem like purchasing or building a dedicated PVR for less $$$ would make more sense? Do you really want to spend $400 just to hack it into a machine that you could have had for $150-$200?
I'm all for the school of thought that says, "It's my hardware, I want to do with it what I want." But sometimes it's okay to say, "this is cool, even thought I don't really have a real use for it yet."
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
...waiting patiently for the day I can run XBMC on my 360. Then I can move the XBOX to another room or a vehicle.
People need to RTFA before submitting... The article specifically says this does NOT get around any kind of security measures present in the 360, and that this doesn't bring them any closer to running homebrew content or bypassing the 360's copy protection and DRM measures.
...perhaps someone can enlighten me on this somewhat unrelated topic.
I have an unhacked XBOX and a bunch of games I play only on occasion. It is annoying, sometimes, how the games load so slowly. I just want to play and put it away.
Can I, without otherwise "hacking" my XBOX hardware, copy the game disks to the internal drive to play them faster? Even if it was just one game at a time, it would improve game enjoyment significantly.
And I do play the XBox-live once in a blue moon with my sons and family... I don't want to break that functionality either.
So anyone got some info or links?
Three hundred and sixty script kiddies can read and write now? Uh oh.
"This opens up a whole new world for the 360. Soon we might be able to run our own home brewed games and show our favourite Xvid movies." "
1) You can already play your favorite movies that are on your XP Media Center PC on the 360.
2) This has very little to do with home brewed (or pirated) games. You can already copy over music, movies, and download games from XboxLive to the HDD. M$ did the same with Xbox1 - they have allowed people access to their own HDD.
He's very selective. He only posts on those topics that can earn him the best possibility of satisfying his incessant need to karma whore and get that holy frits psot. The gaming topic traditionally does not gain a lot of readers, posts, or moderation; therefore, gaming topics for the most part are not worthy of his time.
However, he has received enough redundant, offtopic, and overrated mods that he now posts at 1 instead of 2. Granted, that could also be of his own doing; but considering what a karma whore he is, I doubt that it's voluntary.
Actually, I don't know what's worse. The fact that he continually karma whores even with growing evidence of people getting pissed off with his karma whoring, or the fact that there are still legions of idiots who continue to mod him up for even the most inane posts.
Go ahead, mod me off-topic. That doesn't make what I've said any less true.
Microsoft's Xbox team (if they ever had the attitude) learned the hard way about #4, and #2 & #3 are in fact reinforcing reasons for attitude #1 to be the most likely.
If you haven't noticed, Microsoft is marching firmly in lock step with the recording and movie industries over the idea that customers should not be allowed to use what they purchase in ways that do not make Microsoft more money. Letting developers learn how to put stuff on the machine without going through MS's SDK could lead to homebrew games. Allowing people to write home-brew games means letting there be games that are sold (or worse given away) without paying Microsoft the license fee that makes up for selling Xbox 360s at a loss. Allowing utility access to the hardware might lead to putting Linux on a 360, thus making MS subsidize non-Windows computers that will play licensed games (and make up the loss), or allow the playing of pirated games.
If this is based on a security problem that can be patched in software, MS will treat it as a critical fix and release a patch for it ASAP.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
So other than those 360 dudes, are all the other hackers illiterate?
This is basicly a file system driver and nothing more. In fact the free60 devs(free60.org) have had a filesystem driver like this for thier linux project for weeks. This is just the windows flavour. there is not a ata password on the harddrives this time around. They harddrives even advertise the feature or switching between systems. it didn't take anything special to read/write the drive. It is standard sata. Homebrew is no where near possible yet. the xex(360 executables) are signed. the pirs archives which all live downloads are stored in are signed. the harddrive is signed based on its model and serial number so you can't upgrade to a larger one. everything is very protected. This is merely a tool to explore and transfer some savegames right now.
Oh no, wait...
Most of the people who would be interested in a hacked 360 already have working and hacked Xboxes.
With the massive number of hardware problems the 360 has there isn't going to be any great demand for such an unreliable piece of hardware. I doubt these hacking attempts will go very far other than among the crowd who likes hacking hardware just for the sake of doing it.
Just see for yourself the massive number of malfunctioning 360s at stores or listen to people who work at stores with 360 kiosks to get a feel for just how messed up Microsoft's 360 hardware has turned out. The 360 is not something you want to count on running 365/24/7 in your home entertainment center. Sure you might get luck and get one that works, but there is little reason to risk 400+ dollars if you already have a working Xbox.
What, you expect Microsoft to give you extra functionality for free? If you arent happy with the loading speed buy a 360! Seriously, though, it is trivial to install a hacked bios (as many others pointed out) without modifying the hardware with the older Xboxes (wont work with boxes MFRd after april 04, i believe) but you will lose LIVE functionality altogether. If you want to retain it, you need a chip that can be installed and set to enabled (running games off the hard drive) or disabled (running games off conventional media and connecting to LIVE). If you try to connect to LIVE without taking this precaution, your specific Xbox serial number will be banned for life from the service.
Come on, why can't people be honest and admit that is what they really are looking forward to? I really suspect that a good amount of those who claim not to be interested in getting and running console/handheld XYZ games for free are not telling us the truth....
And lets not forget all the "homebrew" emulators of classic systems that people are running, like you amassed all of those ROMs and ISOs legally. Especially all those MAME ones, you own all 5,000 arcade games, all of which you dumped the ROMs yourself and keep the machines in a shack in your backyard.
There's no law that says, "you must obtain a license to produce software for a game console."
Other than patent law? If the disc format or cartridge format is a patented invention, than anybody who makes use of the invention without the OK of the patent holder is liable for patent infringement.
AFAIK, no one has challenged a console maker in court over reverse engineering for compatibility, making it a legal issue that's still up in the air.
Accolade, a developer of unlicensed software for Sega Genesis consoles, successfully defended against a lawsuit from Sega. The ruling of the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in Sega Enterprises v. Accolade was that the Sega Mega Drive (called Genesis in North America) was not patented, that reverse engineering as practiced by Accolade was lawful, and that the court refused to enforce use of a trademark/copyright based security system as an ersatz patent. But most consoles nowadays are not put together from off-the-shelf parts in the way that the Genesis was. Post-DMCA there is also Lexmark International v. Static Control Components.
Would you rather have no content at all?
I would rather have no proprietary content at all. If all the content is free (e.g. Free Art License) or semi-free (e.g. CC by-sa-nc), there's still a market.
Would you rather spend $550-600 for an Xbox 360 and a PVR, or just $400 for an Xbox 360?
If it meant an Xbox 360 game turning off so that it could record a show, then I'd pay more for a pair of machines that can play games and record video at once. Or what if I have more than one TV in my house?
What if it could also serve as an emulator
How would one lawfully obtain ROM dumps? Except for the GBA, a copier isn't affordable nor sold at retail.
You can already play your favorite movies that are on your XP Media Center PC on the 360.
So now, with a Linux server, how do I emulate the necessary parts of an XP Media Center PC to get Xbox 360 streaming to work?
It's never been illegal to make something for yourself, even if it has technology from 10,000 patents.
Can you back up this assertion? I seem to remember 35 USC 271 not having a broad personal use exemption. Or are you speaking of the patent law of a specific jurisdiction outside the United States?
Look, I'm gonna have to admit that not everything downloaded via bit torrent is going to be something that I have a license for.
The problem is that the dominance of emulators in the homebrew scene combined with the widespread unauthorized copying of classic video games through BitTorrent, eMule, and similar computer programs might lead console makers to believe that homebrew implies piracy, whether of current games or of classic games. We need examples of substantial non-infringing homebrew programs in order to make a case against this myth.
The original Xbox HDD was password-locked to the machine, and used a custom filesystem loosely based on FAT. On the 360, they deliberately didn't lock the drive, not even with a common password. They didn't even bother to change the filesystem. No encryption, no obfuscation, nothing.
MS obviously knew the HDD would be one of the first lines of attack, yet they made no particular effort to secure its contents - in fact, they actually reduced the protection. Why would they do that?
This time round, they have a far more secure model (motherboard communication is encrypted, kernel ram is checksummed, and the per-box keys & hypervisor are built into the CPU itself, where it can't be extracted with anything less than an electron microscope). If they left the HDD exposed, it's because they didn't care if it was modded; they clearly feel confident that it can't compromise the rest of the system. Time will tell, of course, but as useful as Xplorer360 is, it's hardly a great step towards running homebrew code.
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
Slightly.