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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

#111

Post by droopyEyelids »

psychphysic wrote: post #101
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 imp…

All or nothing thinking about security misses the point entirely.

Security is about reducing the frequency of events, and the impact of those events- Not making things philosophically impossible.

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

#112

Post by EatonZ »

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...

It's a 2048-bit key. If it was 1024 maybe it could eventually be cracked? With 2048, I don't think it will be.

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

#113

Post by jcpham2 »

psychphysic wrote: post #101
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 imp…

I had an xecuter mod on the first Xbox and a 2TB hard drive, you could do so many many things with Xbox Media Center on the very first Xbox - FTP your games over.

TBH the Xbox 360 console was like a refresh of XBMC. One of the greatest things about the 360 out of the box was it played popular video codecs directly from USB storage - unmodded!

Unheard of at the time.

I had an early model PSX console in high school and bought the plug and play mod chip online in 2000 or so. Rented a lot of games and bought a lot of verbatim blue bottoms

Later a USB plus 1 wire mod chip for the PS2 that let me play backups and homebrew

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

#114

Post by jchw »

psychphysic wrote: post #101
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 imp…

Hell, they knew it from the PS1 era: Net Yaroze may not have stopped people from trying to hack their PlayStation 1, but it definitely appealed to a part of the crowd that would be most interested in that sort of thing. (And they even included a toolchain! Truly must've been special to be a part of that.)

I think the trouble is that people kept finding ways back from arbitrary code execution in a limited environment to running pirated games and cheating in online games, and Sony continually failed to actually manage that.

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

#115

Post by b1ue64 »

alexklarjr wrote: post #91
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…

Xbone is not hacked because nobody care about essentially a boring pc without any memorable games. It will remain in history as another Microsoft marketing disaster. One day it will eventually and silently destroyed to be emulated like all ancient arcades and microcomputer games protections. Every protection can and will be broken. Regarding unsuccessful money grab, Idea that Microsoft minds forsaw that people will w…

> Xbone is not hacked because nobody care about essentially a boring pc without any memorable games.

No, it's because MS gave them the keys right out of the gate with Dev Mode.

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

#116

Post by AgentME »

nottorp wrote: post #83

Why would they care if my hard drive is genuine? For the PS3, PS4 and PS5 i just bought a hard drive (ssd for the ps5) matching their specs, installed it inside and gamed on. For the xbox you have to buy hard drives from Microsoft? Edit: please don't tell me about usb drives hanging off your console. I don't like stuff hanging off my console.

The later generations of Xbox allow any external hard drives to be used.

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

#117

Post by [deleted] »

Gigachad wrote: post #71

This is pretty similar to how Nintendo validates game cartridges. They all contain a unique signed header. If you connect to an online game and your game serial number is being used by hundreds of other users, Nintendo can see its a pirated copy and you get console banned from online for all games.

[deleted]

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

#118

Post by hot_gril »

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.

Biggest thing is they're running Windows games on Linux via Wine, and idk how happy Microsoft is with that.

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

#119

Post by hot_gril »

everyone wrote: post #74
beardog wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People want products that "just work" and I don't think it is fair to blame them for that. The problems mainly arise when the locked down stuff breaks or treats the user badly in some way, but even if stuff were not locked down the average person would just sell or throw out their device when it no pleased them anyways.

I'm not blaming users for something. I said "I will never understand". Though I can hypothesize. I think in some cases due to deceitful marketing, users think "This thing will be great! It will do X,Y and Z for me.".. Then they buy it and realize that X is forbidden, Y requires a subscription, and Z is not available in their region or whatever. They are disspointed but they've already bought the thing at that point a…

Most people buy an Xbox to play games or an iPhone for its advertised features, and it does that, so they're happy. If they felt tricked like you said, they wouldn't buy the next generation, especially with iPhones where the competition is way more open.

There are other ways I acknowledge hardware is truly becoming anti-consumer, like removing headphone jacks to sell wireless earbuds. Or Xbox HDDs.

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

#120

Post by hot_gril »

ddoolin wrote: post #9
everyone wrote: post #2

I will never understand why people buy that locked down, proprietary, DRM infested shit (gaming consoles, "smart" appliances, smartphones, apple stuff etc.) in the first place. .. I would rather have nothing.

The irony of your username isn't lost on me.

Everyone in the world wants to install a Postgres server on an Xbox 360. Jokes aside, I appreciate EatonZ's work.
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