How close is the Xbox 360 to being hacked?
Word is out on the street that a flaw in the Xbox 360 DVD firmware may allow a hacker to install his own custom firmware in there unchecked, and as such gain full control of what the DVD will or will not accept. In practice, this would mean that the drive could gain the capability to boot backups of original game DVD’s by flashing a self-built firmware in there which ignores the mandatory disc signing. The bold claims are being made by user TheSpecialist, who has been credited with a firmware hack before, which actually went unreleased because of several very good reasons. Considering this makes the guy credible enough, let’s move on to a few excerpts from his recent posts:
Word on the street is that some smart people of this board combined their forces, formed an underground team and are very, VERY close to getting the first 360 backup booting…
When asked for more information and the kind of modification required he responds:
Firmware. I doubt you’ll see some kind of OTHER hack soon, that lets you boot unsigned code for example. MS did a very good job on the 360 itself this time. However, they made a big mistake by forgetting about the firmware. They even didn’t remove the debug routines from the FW, quite amazing … The 360 has a little bit more advanced protection in its FW than the original xbox, but still, they did some stupid things (like forgetting about the debug routines, that were very helpful to us, hehe, and most importantly: not signing the firmware). I’m betting they’ll develop the MPU in the drive from scratch for their next gen consoles and sign the code in the FW
Not signing the firmware is indeed a major mistake, as it allows the hacker to gain full control of the drive. Microsoft can issue a forced update via Live to disable the modification, but a new firmware could be installed again which goes undetected. As such the hacker is in control of the cat/mouse game.
