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Microsoft Banning 360 Firmware Modders?
arcon5 writes "After several months of silence it was more or less accepted that Microsoft wasn't going to do anything about the firmware hacks that allow Xbox 360s to play backups. Rather surprising, considering the 'inventor' of the hack confirmed in March already that the mods are easily detectable, and the reports that piracy is running rampant in countries like China. It appears that Microsoft is finally taking action against them though, although they may be hitting the wrong persons." Best part of that article is the firmware chip encased in epoxy.
That's a lot of modders, but it's not really that big compared to their entire subscriber base. Wonder why they bothered.
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
How naive must someone be to think that silence on the part of a corporation equates to a tacit approval for people to circumvent a piece of hardware's embedded security system in order to run pirated copies of software?
Seems like the modders are always one step ahead.
Future ruler of a small Asian-Pacific island
After several months of silence it was more or less accepted that Microsoft wasnt going to do anything about the firmware hacks that allow Xbox 360s to play backups. Rather surprising, considering the inventor of the hack confirmed in March already that the mods are easily detectable, and the reports that piracy is running rampant in countries like China. It appears that Microsoft is finally taking action against them though, although they may be hitting the wrong persons.
This thread on the official Xbox.com forums was started by Furydog, who posts with a completely empty gamer profile:
I have two xbox 360s and since Friday October 13 2006 I have not been able to connect with my two 360s. According to MS customer support my status codes indicate that I have MODDED 360s which I dont. I have contacted several different people and I only one person (GreenJohnny) has responded to me but he was not able to assist me. Although, he did confirm that the status codes I received indicate that my systems Mac addresses are banned because their supposedly MODDED.
Xbox Support stating there are status codes that indicate a machine was banned for modding? Thats a new one. To further confirm the story ILBCNU from Xbox Support Staff responds to his post stating they are investigating the issue and apologizing for the problem. No denial or anything, so yep, your modded Xbox 360 is now officially in risk of getting banned from Live or worse.
HackerThe fundamental problem with the firmware hack is that its a so-called Man in the Middle attack on the systems security. Imagine a phone call between 2 English speaking people, and youve got control over the line in between. By cutting in at the right moments, you can make it appear to one of the participants that the other one is saying something to him, but its actually you saying something else and making him believe that its a valid response. Thats a simplified explanation of how the hacked firmware works: it lies to the 360 kernel about what the disc is saying about its authenticity. Now imagine if both the speakers on that phone line suspected you were in the middle, and switched to speaking a slightly modified dialect. If youre still breaking in with the original dialect, its easily detectable that youre trying to fool around. Back to the 360, since Microsoft still has absolute control over disc contents and the kernel code, they can simply change the dialect on both sides and thus detect firmware hacks. If they wish, they can take any action they want upon detection, ranging from the simple Xbox Live ban to even bricking your 360 or disabling it to run any newly released games.
There is something slightly fishy about the report though, being that it says the 360 is banned based on MAC address. Those of us familiar with the OSI model and common network implementations will immediately know this is not true, because MAC addresses are part of the Ethernet protocol and live on Layer 2, and never get routed over the internet. In simple terms: your 360s MAC address is not remotely identifiable. An option could be that the Xbox Live login code sends the MAC address itself to the Live servers to be able to uniquely identify the 360, but that would be plain silly since MAC addresses are known not to be unique: they only need to be unique within their physical subnet. A far more obvious solution on Microsofts part would be to use the console serial number for this, which is embedded in the system anyway and truly unique.
Drowning firmware chips in epoxy didnt stop the modders
Whatever the details, we can probably consider it a fact that MS is currently acting against modded Xbox 360s, and you should start worrying if youve got a firmware replacement in your concave box: the Empire is Striking Back.
Many thanks to Puma81 for the link!
Whoever wrote this doesn't have a understanding of how this hack works. Their simplification doesn't accurately portray how this hack works.
From the article:
The fundamental problem with the firmware hack is that it's a so-called Man in the Middle attack on the system's security. Imagine a phone call between 2 English speaking people, and you've got control over the line in between. By cutting in at the right moments, you can make it appear to one of the participants that the other one is saying something to him, but it's actually you saying something else and making him believe that it's a valid response. That's a simplified explanation of how the hacked firmware works: it lies to the 360 kernel about what the disc is saying about its authenticity. Now imagine if both the speakers on that phone line suspected you were in the middle, and switched to speaking a slightly modified dialect. If you're still breaking in with the original dialect, it's easily detectable that you're trying to fool around. Back to the 360, since Microsoft still has absolute control over disc contents and the kernel code, they can simply change the dialect on both sides and thus detect firmware hacks. If they wish, they can take any action they want upon detection, ranging from the simple Xbox Live ban to even bricking your 360 or disabling it to run any newly released games.
Wrong. You are completely compromising the one end of the conversation. it doesn't hijack the communication at all. The dvd drive has been completely compromised and it can speak whatever dialect you make it speak.
The way of authenticating a disc is already set and can't be drastically changed without significant changes to the dvd drive and all currently pressed discs. Its like trying to change away from CSS after you already have a ton of DVD players sold. The hack has been upgraded alot since its initial release and is much more difficult to detect. In its latest form you can't even read out the dvd firmware using the chipset commands.
My open source XBOX-360 Web Browser doesn't render Flash yet.
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Here's the Original Xbox.com post about it. It seems very fishy for a few reasons:
First, he's hiding his played games. That's a very very rare thing to do, because it's just not necessary. Who cared what games you've played, unless you've modded something?
Second, he's got a Gamerscore of 77103. For those who don't have a 360, each game is given a budget of 1000 Gamerpoints which can be unlocked however the game publisher wants - usually it's points-per-level, or for unlocking things in the game. Xbox Live Arcade games get a budget of 200. Gamerankings.com gives me a total of 66 games released for the Xbox 360. That's 66,000 possible points if he finished anything and everything - and most of the games are nigh impossible for any mortal to get all 1000 points on.
Lastly, he's currently playing Cars online as I type. That game is not scheduled to be shipped until tomorrow the 31st, in-stores probably November 1st. If this were the only thing odd I'd just attribute it to a broken street date, but considering all the factors it sounds like he is using a not-quite-ethical way to play games in a way Microsoft didn't intend.
This sucks for the two of you who ACTUALLY WOULD use this to back a game up (understandable, they're pricey at $60 a pop). However, the mass majority of people interested in this hack are pirates who don't want to pay for games. MS is still selling these machines at a hefty loss, so I can't say I blame them for this one.
Unfortunately for them, they dont get the choice in the matter.
The phrase "more better" is acceptable English. suck it grammar Nazis
In many cases you are completely wrong. Market share is the percentage of people using a product. Even if they have no paid for it, the market share of users is extremely valuable. Otherwise Linux would have virtually no market share whatsoever. Nor would any other open source product, which is completely wrong.
And another point, dollars spent is a completely bogus way to look at market share as well. Ferrari and Lambourgini would have much larger market shares if dollars spent affected the market share.
If you want to get really picky here, I would put forth the idea that total time played is an very good indication of the popularity (or market share) of a game. This is not something that a board room group would really care about. But I find it much more interesting than the number of units sold per retail outlet between Nov 1 and Dec 31.
I'd like to also put forth the idea that it would probably be a great idea for a company to give a game away for free (perhaps their own pirated copy even) that was extremely popular to get people to buy their console. Once you get people buying your console, they will likely buy more games. As the original poster claims, get them hooked before you start turning the screws. Of course this would work better for a company like Nintendo that actually makes money on the sale of their console, instead of loosing money on each one, and trying to make up for that loss with game royalties, like Microsoft does.
Definitions can be very subjective things.