Hacking the Xbox 360 Hypervisor Part 2: The Bad Update Exploit • Hacker News Board

Re: Hacking the Xbox 360 Hypervisor Part 2: The Bad Update Exploit

#101

Post by saagarjha » Wed, Mar 05, 2025, 9:47 AM UTC

kmeisthax wrote: post #89

karlgkk wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Part of the reason is motivation - if you hack a console, you can make a fair money, by selling your exploit as a package piece of software. Much like modchip vendors do. In fact, there have been a few software exploits that were sold with ties to a specific console. Funny if you think about it - If you hack an iPhone, you can sell your exploit to many governments and government agencies for millions of dollars If i…

That is true today, but back in 2005 when the Xbox 360 launched we didn't have every government buying up security vulnerabilities by the truckload. The market for zero-days didn't really get established until the early 2010s when the 360 was on its way out. Every contemporary competitor to the Xbox 360 got hacked within its commercial lifespan, due to having comically awful security practices. Microsoft certainly wa…

I mean, people definitely were doing zero day research before 2010.

Re: Hacking the Xbox 360 Hypervisor Part 2: The Bad Update Exploit

#102

Post by aprilnya » Wed, Mar 05, 2025, 11:36 AM UTC

hot_gril wrote: post #30

mschuster91 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Switch is a mainstream-ish ARM system. IIRC it maps really well to Apple's M system.

But the supposedly working Switch emulators only have experimental Mac support at best. Also idk if the CPU arch is really the hard part in general... we never got an Xbox 360 emulator for PPC Mac ;)

I thought Ryujinx’ Mac support was great?

Re: Hacking the Xbox 360 Hypervisor Part 2: The Bad Update Exploit

#103

Post by reginald78 » Wed, Mar 05, 2025, 4:50 PM UTC

mouse_ wrote: post #13

whalesalad wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

at this point is there any reason to use xb360 hardware? emulation on modern hardware has gotta be substantially better

Xbox 360 emulation is still really bad for most games, despite what some YouTubers would have you believe. But let's say in a few years it does become substantially better. There's still: • Nostalgia • Authenticity • Compatibility • Preservation • Cost of entry Even if 360 emulation does become practical, a 360 will still be cheaper than any gaming PC capable of playing those games.

I went to fire up my old Xbox 360 to play dance central with my kids and of course it had developed RRoD while sitting on a shelf in my basement. It seems emulation is a no go for kinect games as well.

Re: Hacking the Xbox 360 Hypervisor Part 2: The Bad Update Exploit

#104

Post by hart_russell » Wed, Mar 05, 2025, 6:17 PM UTC

ghusbands wrote: post #82

hart_russell wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You misread, that's not what I wrote.

You wrote "He suggests that all of the fat models will eventually red ring due to being stress tested at the factory" - it directly states that stress testing at the factory is the claimed reason that the fat models will red ring. Or was the video host somehow stress tested at a factory?

The video states that the stress testing is what aggravates the underlying design flaw.

Re: Hacking the Xbox 360 Hypervisor Part 2: The Bad Update Exploit

#105

Post by hot_gril » Wed, Mar 05, 2025, 11:17 PM UTC

aprilnya wrote: post #102

hot_gril wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the supposedly working Switch emulators only have experimental Mac support at best. Also idk if the CPU arch is really the hard part in general... we never got an Xbox 360 emulator for PPC Mac ;)

I thought Ryujinx’ Mac support was great?

Maybe it was, idk cause that project shut down

Re: Hacking the Xbox 360 Hypervisor Part 2: The Bad Update Exploit

#106

Post by minihoot » Fri, Mar 07, 2025, 3:48 AM UTC

hot_gril wrote: post #4

14 wrote: post #2

Very cool to see people still working on hacking the 360. I used the RGH on my 360 years ago. Was really fun back in the day going through all the cat and mouse that went on. A soft mod would be cool as the RGH does require soldering some very tiny wires to some very tiny pads and I remember seeing posts of many people lifting pads trying to do this mod. But in the end I had a perfect install on my 360 and would boot…

Do the people who hack 360s also know how to prevent them from inevitably red-ringing? Cause that's the biggest thing discouraging me from buying another (my other 2 went red).

The slim doesn't red ring.

Re: Hacking the Xbox 360 Hypervisor Part 2: The Bad Update Exploit

#107

Post by NegativeLatency » Tue, Mar 11, 2025, 5:35 AM UTC

perching_aix wrote: post #86

NegativeLatency wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also find it much less drama to sit down on the couch and fire up a console, than to have to: - startup PC - update PC - figure out why bluetooth controller won't pair to PC - finally get it working, and then have a game crash on you

Considering that the constant stream of system software and game updates became a thing exactly in the 7th console generation (x360 era), updates are a pretty funny thing to bring up in a comparison like this.

Yeah that’s fair, my consoles are mostly Nintendo or older systems

Re: Hacking the Xbox 360 Hypervisor Part 2: The Bad Update Exploit

#108

Post by jonny_eh » Tue, Mar 11, 2025, 5:00 PM UTC

throwaway48476 wrote: post #12

hart_russell wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This video does a deep dive on the subject: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=24KbVf1AD1c He suggests that all of the fat models will eventually red ring due to being stress tested at the factory. Not sure how true that is.

RIP Felix has a much better video that explains the cause of the failure. Factory stress isn't the cause. It was a bad design.

Share the link?

Re: Hacking the Xbox 360 Hypervisor Part 2: The Bad Update Exploit

#109

Post by ryantheleach » Mon, Mar 17, 2025, 2:44 PM UTC

kmeisthax wrote: post #43

I'm gonna be honest, I thought the story was over when they started talking about "oh hey here's this hypervisor code that loads extensions", because obviously extensions are going to be a massive increase in attack surface. But even then, the system wasn't actually broken by the extension being badly designed; the extension was just the most useful target to use the actual attack on. How the hell has this the Xbox 3…

> How the hell has this the Xbox 360 hypervisor remained basically impenetrable?

Conspiracy theorist in me thinks that since it was a games console, the NSA didn't mandate backdoors, so MS software and hardware security guys could just make the toughest hardware and software they could dream of. Sprinkled with a decent serving of luck.

So the Xbox360 was essentially a playground for MS hypervisor team, without needing to worry about national security or interference.

A perfect breeding ground for developing an actually secure product they could potentially use in the future, if they were allowed.