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Microsoft Bans Modified Xbox 360s From Xbox Live
An anonymous reader writes "Microsoft has now officially started banning Xbox 360s that have had their DVD drive firmware modified from Live, possibly using information brought in by the Crackdown-originated Halo 3 beta downloads. Scene site forums have already collapsed under traffic, and Microsoft has officially confirmed that they are banning modded Xbox 360s to keep the online playing field fair and level."
The firmware hack did not allow you to do this. Since all code on the Xbox 360 (and PS3 for that matter), is signed and run through a hypervisor, for you to run a backup it needs to be identical to the original. Altering any of the code for wall hacks in Hallo 3 for example will change the result of the signing algorithm and the 360 will refuse to run it. The hypervisor was briefly compromised a while ago on the 360 but quickly patched (6 days I believe, so quicker than the file copying bug in vista). Using back ports of the previously hacked Xbox motherboard firmware it is possible to get a few things running such as preliminary XBMC and emulators (I'm not 100% on this maybe someone can confirm). However it is still not possible to run unsigned games.
Incidentally the method Microsoft used to detect the hack this time is very interesting. It was believed that the DVD drive firmware hack was un-detectable as well as un-patchable since Microsoft had no way of remotely upgrading or checking the firmware. A few weeks ago it was theorized that Microsoft could possibly pick up the difference in DVD read jitter between DVD-R media versus printed originals. You can kinda make out jitter by listening to the extra work a DVD drive does when reading a DVD-R compared to a printed DVD. Anyway a firmware patch was released for this purpose. It appears to not have worked however since reports are coming in that people are getting banned even with this latest patch. Currently its being theorized that possibly Microsoft are checking the read speed difference, between DVD-R and pressed DVD's. Data rates tend to drop slightly to my knowledge when reading DVD-R's, so this could be detected from the main 360 software. Others are speculating that Microsoft have just been data mining for the past few months and have just banned those they have picked up until the jitter patch was released.
Finally it is also interesting that Microsoft have only banned the detected Xbox console and not the Live account. They clearly want the hackers to spend more money buying more hardware off them. An interesting way of getting some lost revenue back.
As someone who has a 360 and had a silver account (the free one) then got a gold let me give you some facts:
,etc. Don't complain cause you get banned because you are no longer on the same level, doesn't matter what the "hack" is, want to play on live it costs 50 bucks a year and you can't mod your 360. Don't want to follow the rules then don't play.
1. Console updates are given to anyone.
2. You may download free stuff with either account
3. Some content (free) may first be only available to gold members then to silver.
4. You must have gold to play multiplayer.
5. You can buy extra content without having a gold membership
Look playing on xbox live has a set of rules. Like playing in the NBA, NFL, Nascar, etc
Dumb analogy complaining sports have substance abuse rules. Why not let athletes who have been loaded up on steroids compete against those who trained without them?