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How the Xbox 360 knows if your hard drive is genuine

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Re: How the Xbox 360 knows if your hard drive is genuine

#101

Post by psychphysic »

jchw wrote: post #56

Microsoft really seemed to be ahead of the curve with console security. They really thought this through back in 2005 or so, to the point where clearly, they knew people would hack the drives to rewrite the serial number. It's probably for the best that they never actually did anything about the knowledge that gave them, but they clearly stayed a step ahead of the game. As much as I hate it, their actions show a grea…

I don't get this. Hacking was huge on the 360, as was piracy that JTAG thing using the cooler runner and browning out the processor after slowing it, there were multiple mod chips and finally the ODEs coming out the wazhoo.

The funny thing about security is it's about the weakest links they find.

So you can harden link A as much as you want if link B is a dud all the extra work on A was wasted energy.

What's most impressive is Xbox realised this and added in Dev mode.

What's shocking is Sony knew this from the PS2 era and gave it up!

Re: How the Xbox 360 knows if your hard drive is genuine

#102

Post by kevingadd »

EMIRELADERO wrote: post #93
Jerrrry wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

so you want an unhackable, but fully open, client. zero sense.

No, I want the client to not be able to hack the game experience for other users.

This is only possible for server-controlled experiences, and it doesn't stop people from botting and aimhacking. Basically unworkable for action games.

Re: How the Xbox 360 knows if your hard drive is genuine

#103

Post by progbits »

haneefmubarak wrote: post #95
progbits wrote: post #89

I couldn't find what is the size of the RSA key used. Any chance it is small enough to be broken today with bunch of cloud instances and few $100 [1] to spare? It was almost 20 years after all. Of course cloning another disk is simpler and more practical, but it might be fun to eg. have custom logos on unmodded console. [1] https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2015/10/break...

Wild guess: since the field given in the article is 256 bytes and the signature is probably just padded to the same size as the key, it's probably 2048 bits which is not really easily crackable (any key-specific flaws notwithstanding).

Nice catch, that is a reasonable assumption.

Oh well, too bad. Maybe one day ;)

Re: How the Xbox 360 knows if your hard drive is genuine

#104

Post by EMIRELADERO »

kmeisthax wrote: post #69
morcheeba wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That was a tactic Nintendo used with the gameboy. The courts eventually decided that the logo, when used as an access token like that, no longer qualified for the creative component required for copyright protection.

Strictly speaking, the logo bit wasn't about copyright, but trademark. Specifically there was certain territories that Japan had trademark treaties with, but not copyright treaties. Taiwan if I remember correctly. So you could legally make unlicensed copies of Super Mario Bros but they couldn't be called Super Mario Bros. This is why a lot of old bootleg games change the titlescreen to say, say, "7 GRAND DAD[0]" inst…

Ah, a fellow Joel fan

Re: How the Xbox 360 knows if your hard drive is genuine

#105

Post by anonymousiam »

This is the same sort of bullshit that HP has done with their computer hard drives, but with an even more elaborate lock-in by Microsoft in this case. The HP computers came with an OEM Windows CD so you could re-install the OS after replacing a bad hard drive, but if you chose to replace the hard drive with anything other than a "genuine" HP replacement part, the Windows installation would fail. Note that the HP replacement part has half the capacity for twice the price, and a poor warranty.

I spent two weeks sparing with HP over this. They sent me a replacement Windows CD that behaved in exactly the same way, and in the end, they were off their flowchart with no way to escalate the issue. I was able to install the same version of Windows on the computer using a non-OEM Microsoft Windows installation disc. HP Support insisted that it was perfectly okay to replace their OEM drive with something else, and denied any lock-in countermeasures when I challenged them. Either the support staff honestly didn't know about this (probably illegal) policy, or they did know, and were required to deny it.

After this, I actively advised all of my clients to avoid HP hardware. At the time, I advised them to use Dell instead, but Dell has its own problems these days.

Re: How the Xbox 360 knows if your hard drive is genuine

#106

Post by EatonZ »

slezakattack wrote: post #100

Interesting post but was really hoping to understand why some of my saves wouldn't transfer to other 360 consoles. Back when the "red ring of death" was more common, I would be issued a replacement console. When I snapped my hard drive back in and turned on Ninja Gaiden 2, I wouldn't be able to continue my progress. I had the unfortunate luck of this happening several times to me and I eventually quit playing that ga…

There are "transfer flags" on content items that control whether they could be copied/moved.

Re: How the Xbox 360 knows if your hard drive is genuine

#107

Post by infotogivenm »

chronogram wrote: post #60
infotogivenm wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not disagreeing but remember > Microsoft Corp., the world's largest software maker, loses at least $153 (U.S.) on each Xbox 360 video game console it sells, based on just the cost of components and assembly, a research firm says. Parts such as processors and manufacturing cost $552.27 for each machine that retails at $399, El Segundo, Calif. With this context it doesn’t surprise me they try to recoup something on eac…

When was that? Because at the start of the console your chip might be a cutting edge and incur massive costs, but cost a tenth to produce once it goes from cutting-edge to practiced.

2004, early days

Re: How the Xbox 360 knows if your hard drive is genuine

#108

Post by Teknoman117 »

anonymousiam wrote: post #105

This is the same sort of bullshit that HP has done with their computer hard drives, but with an even more elaborate lock-in by Microsoft in this case. The HP computers came with an OEM Windows CD so you could re-install the OS after replacing a bad hard drive, but if you chose to replace the hard drive with anything other than a "genuine" HP replacement part, the Windows installation would fail. Note that the HP repl…

> Dell has its own problems these days.

I am honestly very annoyed that my 2019 XPS 15 will refuse to negotiate anything higher than 65W over USB-C PD on a non-Dell charger. Their dock does 130W, yet every third party dock, brick, or monitor I use it refuses to exceed 65W.

Re: How the Xbox 360 knows if your hard drive is genuine

#110

Post by amalcon »

izacus wrote: post #88
LesZedCB wrote: post #10

stuff like this is outrageous. i got a steam deck a few weeks ago and decided to grab the base model and an $80 512GB NVMe drive on newegg. the install was easy and i saved a ton of money. that's how hardware should work, especially stuff as easy as drives/RAM.

Steam Deck is pretty much the spiritual opposite of everything the console makers and the DRM industry stands for. I'm just waiting for big DRM publishers to start blocking it with excuse of poor DRM security and lockout.

It's sold by arguably the largest DRM provider. Valve just seems think of DRM as a way to keep honest people honest, rather than as something that aspires to be unassailable.
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