Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

How the Xbox 360 knows if your hard drive is genuine

eaton-works.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

191–200 of 266 posts

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

#191

Post by wraptile »

Waterluvian wrote: post #133
capableweb wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love the newest entrant to the console wars, who decided to just run their game store on a Linux computer, optimize the UX a bit and make it all work great with its chosen hardware. Currently maybe a bit underpowered, but shows great promise and I believe the Steam Deck has a bright future in front of it.

The Steam Deck has sold fewer than 1% the number of Switches sold, which tells me there is far more to selling a console than the technology. Well, that’s an obvious statement, but I think many of us tech people commonly under-appreciate all the “non-engineering” components to making a product successful. I think “optimize the UX a bit” is what they did, and it falls very woefully short of what they need. Especially…

I don't think comparing new entry to the market with the OG pioneer is fair in any way, shape or form. Nintendo did get a 33 year head start.

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

#192

Post by oynqr »

rjh29 wrote: post #162
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…

Nintendo is not far behind Sony in the (in)security department. The 3DS was hacked in several ways including an browser exploit that worked on recent firmware. The 3DS eShop was serving games via CDN with no authentication. And the first edition Switch has a hardware-based exploit that is unpatchable!

We really ought to thank Nvidia for that last one.

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

#193

Post by yellowapple »

kevingadd wrote: post #184
yellowapple wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet there are plenty of action games that remain fun to play while running on platforms that ain't locked down tighter than a jelly donut stash in a weight loss clinic. Botting and aimhacking do happen, but apparently not with sufficient frequency to be a problem.

It's so much of a problem that most PC games make you install a rootkit, you mean? One of the big ones (Valorant) requires a rootkit that actively disables running unrecognized software, specifically to stop you from cheating.

Quite a few games do use kernel-mode anti-cheat, but it's far from "most" even in the narrow category of multiplayer first-person shooters, let alone multiplayer games in general.

Large studios are installing anti-cheat rootkits for the same reason they used to install anti-piracy rootkits: because they're excessively paranoid about any possibility whatsoever of revenue loss. Anti-piracy rootkits fell out of fashion when enough customers got fed up with them to stop buying games with them; I would be entirely unsurprised if anti-cheat rootkits met the same fate - especially given the recent popularity of devices like the Steam Deck that make shipping such rootkits (for either reason) exceedingly difficult.

----

EDIT: and in any case, I'll take "have the choice to install kernel-level anti-cheat on my machine if I so choose" over "not have that choice" any day.

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

#194

Post by oynqr »

userbinator wrote: post #155
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…

Meanwhile, the pirate with cracked Windows has none of these problems.

And they also get to use the same version without the bloat for the next ~10 years. While getting security updates.

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

#196

Post by fragmede »

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.

Back in the day StarCraft did the same thing. Except the key generation algorithm was reverse engineered. So even a legit key had the risk of being used online by pirates and being blocked.

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

#198

Post by EatonZ »

justicz wrote: post #195

Is the code/assembly for the RSA signature check (`XeKeysVerifyRSASignature`?) available anywhere online?

https://i.imgur.com/AFZIA3p.png

It takes in the RSA signature, SHA data hash, and RSA key type. Key types are: XE_PIRS_RSA_KEY = 0x0, XE_LIVEDRM_RSA_KEY = 0x1, XE_DEVICE_RSA_KEY = 0x2 (this is the Sata verification key), XE_XSIGNER2_RSA_KEY = 0x3

It uses key type to load the corresponding public key from memory at static addresses, then verification takes place.

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

#199

Post by transpute »

nine_k wrote: post #179
userbinator wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

and many of these technologies are now showing up via Project Pluton. More awareness needs to be made of how this will have a devestating impact on end-user freedom. They're attacking the PC, one of the last holdouts of general-purpose computing freedom. Remote attestation will make it so you "can" technically run your own hardware and software (and that's what the FUD-spreaders will always say), but you'll be denied…

The PC will eventually lock up more. Free general-purpose computing will remain on things like Raspberry Pi (and many other variants). There will be Windows computers, like we now have Macs, and Windows-incapable computers to run Linux (or whatever else open OS).

RPi boot path includes the GPU/VPU, which runs a binary blob based on an older version of ThreadX RTOS, whose upstream is now called Azure RTOS ThreadX. Work on an open-source replacement has been slowly inching forward for a few years.

Arm, including the quirky RPi, is not comparable in openness to x86 general purpose desktops, which were a happy confluence of accidents, determined individuals and scrappy businesses. That is still worth defending, if only to slow the slide backwards.

M1 Macs have a unique take on hardware security that can co-exist with general-purpose computing for open-source Linux, and Apple's vertical integration. https://archive.fosdem.org/2022/schedule/speaker/xeno_kovah/. Hopefully Asahi Linux will succeed in creating a relatively maintainable port for multiple generations of Apple Silicon.

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

#200

Post by toast0 »

userbinator wrote: post #190
SturgeonsLaw wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there any mechanism for it to validate that the thing connected to the display output is an unmodified monitor which also implements DRM? Otherwise it would be almost trivial to have a device with HDMI-in that gets a pixel perfect feed of the protected stream.

Yes, that's called HDCP. The master key was cracked long ago for older versions.

For new versions, you can get a converter; hdcp 2.2 -> hdcp 1.4 and then use whatevee breakage on 1.4. So it's only effective if you don't search.
Post reply on HN