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Xbox 360 Reset Hack Yields Unsigned Code Execution
walshy007 writes "A new exploit has been shown which allows unsigned code execution on the Xbox 360 for all current models. It functions by pulsing the reset pin at a critical time during the checksumming/crypto boot process.
The exploit enables the running of Xell, a boot loader which facilitates the running of Linux, amongst other programs."
...Of Alyx Vance's PDA? Just give it a good zap, it'll do what you want!
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Now I can run Windows on my 360!
That reminds me of the old Atari 2600, how if you hit the "select" switch at just the right moment after power-up or reset, you could add an extra "bullet" to Space Invaders, and really rack up scores! The normal game only allowed one bullet to be on screen at a time, so having two was a significant advantage.
Willie...
Too bad the 360 exploit doesn't stop protect their website from the slashdot effect as well.
Does this open the door to put XBMC back on the XBox?
I can already run unsigned code on any of half a dozen PCs or similar devices I have that are not the 360 and are FAR more powerful. This is interesting-ish in that it's a neat kind of hack, but really... why would I want to do this now?
"Oh my God. This is terrible. This is the end of my Presidency. I'm fucked."; ~ Donald J. Trump
I refuse to buy devices where the mfg intentionally locks me out of running code I want on a device that I own. Sure, sure, these hacks appear but you have to subvert the attempts by the vendor to lock you out of your own hardware. Same for many cell phones, and with things like the iPad slowly starting to eat away at PC sales, that seems to be how personal computing is going to go. It'll end up that you can only run "approved" code on your own device to prevent "hackers" - just wait.
I don't get why so many other people don't seem to mind giving up control over their own systems. It's a war only one side is fighting.
I remember shorting 2 pins at the back of the Commodore C-64 to enable POKEs to cheat.
Deconstructing The Xbox Security System
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9NqLljaHc80
Xbox 360 Security System and its Weaknesses
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uxjpmc8ZIxM
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
For all the usual emulators to get ported. Is it really that big a deal to run a Sega Genesis emulator on your Xbox? If you want a media player then you might as well buy a netbook for around the same price but with a larger hard drive and much lower power requirements.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
If you care about software choice and freedom then stop buying unfree platforms.
They will continue binding our hands and treating us like consumers as long as we put up with it.
If we want the freedom to tinker we must demand it and vote accordingly with our wallets.
Why even invest development energy in a worthless, crippled, corporate platform?
Let's take all of the intelligence elsewhere and leave the game systems to the game kiddies.
I mean you can crash your Xbox360 in many different ways, including unintentional ones. But the entire point of presenting an exploit is the fact that it is useful in some way, even if minor?
During the PSP race.... I used to think OH wow that's a good trick. Check it! the PSP plopped up a hello world, and thus proof that, and no shit, it runs custom code !!OMG!!
Wait a month or 2 and that 360 will be running a Neo-Geo emulator full speed and reasonable sound with chrome in the background on a Debian PPC custom build.
Thanks for the news Captain Obvious.
this lets you figure out the keys that are necessary to write to the optical drive firmware to pair them up again, because there are boatloads of systems out there that don't work after someone removed and lost track of the paired drive that was in it.
I'm still be-puzzle-ated at how people figure out all these hacks and exploits. I'm at a loss how someone would go about intentionally trying to crack ANYTHING.
Someone is going to prison! You play with xbox.. you get the cage box.... F Msoft btw...
"Computers are a lot like Air Conditioners" "They both work great until you start opening Windows"
I find it surprising the level of bitterness towards hacking game consoles. Most of the kids with jtags have em so they can mod. It's not about piracy and people will want to mod their 360s for a number of reasons outside of piracy. Please don't reply "get PC games and mod then". You have to realize people own the hardware and want to do with what they wish. Novel idea. Just happens to be at the root of all things great about computing. Please stop going on about piracy!
Sure beats arguing on /.
NO IT DOESN'T!
This is my footer. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
A lot of people are saying things like "ohhh, I wonder how long before emulators appear".
FYI, this is actually the 3rd hack like this to appear for the 360. There was a first hack, the KK (King Kong) exploit that got patched quickly, then in 2009 details for a JTAG hack were released. Because of this, there's quite a few 360's running unsigned code out there and plenty of emulators for them. MAME, SNES, Genesis/MD, I believe someone even ported Final Burn Alpha. Sadly the homebrew scene wasn't quite as rampant as the PS3 homebrew scene and neither had anything on the Xbox homebrew scene, but hopefully this will breathe new life into it.
Suffice to say, as a JTAG owner myself, it's worth it for being able to store and load all your games from a HDD. With most 360 games (full games, that is) clocking in at about 6.5GB, you don't even need a lot of space for a big collection.
+1 IDisagreeSoHeMustBeATrollOrAnAstroturferOrAShill
Thanks guys. You do realise that MS will now "upgrade" all of the XBoxes to "improve service" and "enhance security"?
And you know what that means. My save files will be corrupted, I'll probably lose at least one game plugin, and my Linux->Xbox streaming workaround will stop working around. You had to go and encourage them didn't you?
Please consider this account deleted, I just can't be bothered with the spam anymore.
Because I assume the code as written could only handle one bullet at a time. I doubt they put in extra memory locations and support code for more "just in case someone hit select at power-up".
No one cares, man. quit karmawhoring, you posted AC.
However nowadays you get video hardware acceleration chips, low-power dual core CPUs and all you need to run a media center for less than $200
Including the price of an operating system license?
I'm running XMBC on Ubuntu Server using an Asus S1-AT5NM10E (the mouthful) witch tops at 2% CPU when displaying a 1080p/DTS movie.
How much CPU does it use when playing a video game? The advantage of buying an Xbox 360 over building an HTPC is that an Xbox 360 plays Xbox 360 games that don't make it to the PC in addition to watching video.
if you want control get yourself a Nexus and a PC if not then you can opt for an iphone and an xbox.
So what do I buy if I want both control and local multiplayer? Major video game companies don't make multiplayer games for home theater PCs; they make them for consoles.
old games just fucking ROCK on a big TV
LCD HDTVs have VGA and HDMI inputs. Every PC since 1987 has had a VGA output or a DVI-I output that is electrically compatible with VGA, and many have an HDMI output or a DVI-D output that is electrically compatible with HDMI.
a controller in your hand
Every PC since 1999 has had an input for USB game controllers. Xbox 360 controllers work, as do old console controllers through an adapter.
The hardest part of legal emulation is soldering together the device needed to copy your cartridges into the computer to play them.
I refuse to buy devices where the mfg intentionally locks me out of running code I want on a device that I own.
Better sell your car then. And your TV. Microwave, coffee maker, and alarm clock are gonna hafta go as well as dozens of other embedded devices.
Guess what a car, TV, microwave, coffee maker, and alarm clock have in common: The manufacturer can't add applications to them after selling them. So please allow me to rephrase:
I refuse to buy devices where the manufacturer can add its own applications but I'm locked out of adding my own applications.
Are you aware that unmodified Xbox360 have been able to install game discs to harddrive for quite a while now? You still have to put the disc in the drive (to prove you're not a filthy pirate) but nearly all games run unmodified from HDD without spinning the disc. Its quieter and sometimes faster.
This was not true 10 years ago when HTPC didn't really exist
HTPCs exist, but still not enough to matter. FunkSoulBrother, CronoCloud, and Altrag seem to be under the impression that apart from devout geeks, so few people have HTPCs that they might as well not exist (1 2 3 4). People are under the impression that computers are for desks and consoles are for TVs, and never the twain shall meet, according to hawguy and Endo13 (5 6 7), especially when people already have enough trouble plugging in a DVD player ( 8 9).
Your free to chose what hardware you own though. XBox 360 owners are a self selected group of people who don't want their hardware cracked. Its anti-social to buy into that culture and then break its tenants. If a group of people want to support a system where the hardware is locked down, how do they go about it? In what way can they keep hackers away? What hoops do we need to put in place to prevent their interference? So yeah buy a PC please.
Thanks
Bond shot them both.
If you gotta' ask why we do it, you'll never get it. Even so, it's all I can do not to monologue here.
This has been deemed uncompetitive in Europe.
So has Nintendo of Europe been forced not to have the same requirement of a dedicated secure office and mainstream video game industry experience on another platform that Nintendo of America is known to require (source: warioworld.com)?
It's even more of a non-issue with the homebrew scene that allows you to hack your console if you really want that control.
Homebrew generally can't be sold, which limits the production values of an original homebrew game to freeware production values because the developer has no way to recoup costs. The WiiBrew community in particular has called sellers of homebrew software "scammers". In order for a developer to make the transition from production values typical of non-ad-supported freeware to greater production values, as I understand it, the developer must qualify for a legit devkit.
If you're the one doing the developing, why don't you develop for HTPCs?
Because as CronoCloud and others have repeatedly pointed out, statistically nobody has put together a home theater PC. (1 2 3 4 5 6 7) Among the general public, it appears people have trouble hooking up a DVD player, let alone a computer. (8 9) And in my experience talking to other Redbox customers when in line to return a DVD, most people I meet have a CRT SDTV in the living room, not the HDTV needed to display PC video without an obscure adapter (a scan converter) that nobody but devout geeks know exist.
You know you can do local multiplayer on a PC with no problems
But almost nobody else will be able to play it. Please see my reply to Anonymous Coward.
and you can develop it there in XNA
XNA supports neither unmanaged languages nor DLR languages. In other words: "If your game allows the use of more than one controller, it must be written in C# if it is to gain any substantial audience." Do I understand you correctly?
I already did, you just split the relevant part out. You can do it on a PC and then push it out to the XBox.
I was just trying to make absolutely sure whether or not XNA was the only viable means of entry for a new studio before I buy an Xbox 360 console and an App Hub subscription. (The rest of my post tries to explain what I mean by "viable".)
Yes, for your *extreme* niche where you want local multiplayer on a TV but you don't want it on Wii or PS3 and you want it without an XBox devkit and for the people who don't want to hook their PC up to their TV there is only that solution.
Lately I've had trouble properly estimating the size of a given niche or edge case. I wrote about this difficulty in a recent journal entry. So let me say it as I understand it: Micro-ISVs tend not to qualify for the full Wii, PS3, or Xbox 360 devkit. They're a niche, I'll grant, but an extreme niche?
However if your product is any good you shouldn't have any problems with people hooking a PC to a TV to play, or even playing on their monitors.
"Putting it bluntly, no one gives a damn about same screen multiplayer in PC games. Designing such a game is futile, there is no real market for them." --CronoCloud
"Let me say that again: Most non-geek people simply have no desire to hook up their computer to their TV" --CronoCloud
"I don't want to hook a computer up to my TV" --hawguy
"You're overestimating the technical knowledge of at least 80% of consumers -- I'd never be able to talk Dad through hooking up a VGA cable between his TV and laptop and then get him to use the computer to watch video." --hawguy
What I gather from the above comments is that even if I made a page about how to buy a gaming HTPC, a page about how to hook it up, and a page about how to configure the operating system to make text readable, people would still not be willing to give it a try.
That's HTPCs again, why are you thinking of only targeting HTPCs?
Because I have been defining "home theater PC" broadly as any PC using a TV as a monitor. (We appear to have fallen into Layne's Law.) Is there a better term that I should have used to refer to "a PC using a TV as a monitor"?
No, they appear to believe there is no desire currently.
So I guess next time I meet one of them, I need to ask: "How good would a game need to be to get people to hook a PC up to a TV to play it?"
Why wouldn't they try an indie PC game?
Because they don't already have the hardware to run its multiplayer mode, such as a second PC next to the TV and PC-compatible gamepads for players 2 through 4. (Xbox 360 wired controllers work fine under Windows XP and later and Ubuntu, but Wii and PLAYSTATION 3 controllers and Xbox 360 wireless controllers need obscure drivers and/or dongles to work on a PC.) I guess one option is to get players hooked on the single-player portion of a PC game and then start introducing multiplayer; is this what you were thinking of?