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Hackers Leak Xbox One SDK Claiming Advancement In Openness and Homebrew

Posted by samzenpus on from the open-it-up dept.

MojoKid writes Microsoft, it seems, just can't catch a break. Days after a major hack took its servers offline on Christmas day, and after being lambasted in multiple stories for shipping games like Halo: The Master Chief Collection in nigh-unplayable condition, the company's Xbox One SDK has been leaked to the public by a group calling itself H4LT. H4LT, which apparently objects to being called a hacker group, offered this explanation when asked why it was distributing the SDK. The group claims that "the SDK will basically allow the community to reverse and open doors towards homebrew applications being present on the Xbox One." To be clear, what H4LT has done is a far cry from groups like Lizard Squad. The SDK for any given product is typically available behind some degree of registration, but they don't necessarily cost anything. The SDK is one small component of creating the ecosystem that would be necessary to get homebrew up and running on the platform. Whether or not users will ever pull it off is another question.

4 of 86 comments (clear)

  1. No. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Zero shits given. By anyone.

  2. I stopped reading ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I stopped reading after it labelled the Christmas DDoS as a "major hack". As for the "leaking": I assume you can already get most stuff just by registering as an indipendent developer (I think it's even free http://www.xbox.com/developers/id) and all stuff by registering as a professional developer.

  3. Translation by Futurepower(R) · · Score: 4, Insightful

    "Microsoft, it seems, just can't catch a break."

    Translation: Microsoft is poorly managed.

  4. Does it really matter by alvinrod · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Does it really matter if the SDK is available so long as there's no way to run that code? I'm not really up on the latest consoles and how close they are to finding exploits to allow code execution, but it would seem rather premature to claim that this is some great victory. If nothing else it's better that people are spending their time on things like this rather than Launching DDOS attacks against the companies online services.