I don't use Xbox. However, I appreciate your generosity.
I second that.
Releasing my book "Hacking the Xbox" as a free PDF in honor of Aaron Swartz
21–30 of 38 posts
Re: Releasing my book "Hacking the Xbox" as a free PDF in honor of Aaron Swartz
#22Good for you. It's content that you wrote and you, as the author and copyright holder, made a decision to release it for free.
That's not exactly what Aaron Swartz stood for, though.
Re: Releasing my book "Hacking the Xbox" as a free PDF in honor of Aaron Swartz
#23Love your book! I already own the dead tree copy. Any idea about how hard/costly it would be to sniff the PS3's XDR bus? Even better if you can modify just one 4-byte write. Before the lv0ldr keys were released publicly, it was thought that a well funded piracy group had figured out a way to dump XDR RAM because they could only resign games for lower firmwares, they couldn't patch out key checks in new firmwares (no lv0ldr private key).
At one point in time I was trying to figure out how to use the XDR bus calibration routines to write arbitrary memory at startup through the Cell BE's SPI configuration ring. Fun times!
While having fun with the PS3, I got a DMCA takedown notice for an "anti-circumvention tool" that decrypted and reencrypted a sort of "sandbox profile" for the PS3's OS. I hadn't even interpreted the data yet! That scared the crap out of me, especially since Sony went after a German PS3 hacker to the tune of €750,000. [0] I have no idea how Aaron felt with a federal prosecutor after him. =(
[0]: http://geohotgotsued.blogspot.com/2011/02/grafchokolo.html
Re: Releasing my book "Hacking the Xbox" as a free PDF in honor of Aaron Swartz
#24For those who don't know, Bunnie is an absolute rockstar in the hacking/reverse engineering space. His detailed research and clear explanations are an inspiration. If you'd like a quick idea of what you're getting into, read this: http://web.mit.edu/bunnie/www/proj/anatak/AIM-2002-008.pdf
And thank you Bill Pollock! No Starch Press is a revelation in the tech publishing space. The books they choose to publish have always been clear and useful. A friend was showing me a book he just bought this weekend and I saw the logo on the cover. He did look at me strangely when I said - "No Starch, must be great!" :).
Re: Releasing my book "Hacking the Xbox" as a free PDF in honor of Aaron Swartz
#25Do you have a way to send donations?
Re: Releasing my book "Hacking the Xbox" as a free PDF in honor of Aaron Swartz
#26First thank you for making your work available for free. Looks like very interesting to read. And second, you can't exepect anything else from a capitalist economy Justice system. (Almost?) all life aspects in a capitalist economy suffer from this "self-agrandishment" (also known since inmemorial times as "greed") illness. It's the basic concept of capitalism, so nothing new actually.
If political/economical views are reduced to its basic concepts, then communism is about sharing and socialism is about the state caring about its citizens. Capitalism isn't about greed either, but about individual freedom.
But that might be a bit too reductionist (let Stalin spread the love).
IMHO this is not about "capitalism". It's about "human greediness". Homo hominis lupus.
Re: Releasing my book "Hacking the Xbox" as a free PDF in honor of Aaron Swartz
#27I don't use Xbox. However, I appreciate your generosity.
The book illustrates the different techniques bunnie used to hack the xbox. Great read if you're into hardware hacking. Many of the techniques can be applied to other systems. No Xbox required!
Re: Releasing my book "Hacking the Xbox" as a free PDF in honor of Aaron Swartz
#28I'm not very experienced with circuits in the slightest bit. EE 101 is about the extent of my experience so I was expecting this to be way over my head...Man, was I wrong. You did an amazing job with this, I'm blown away that you can make such a complex subject easy to understand.
Re: Releasing my book "Hacking the Xbox" as a free PDF in honor of Aaron Swartz
#29Good for you. It's content that you wrote and you, as the author and copyright holder, made a decision to release it for free. That's not exactly what Aaron Swartz stood for, though.
I noticed that Bunnie attended MIT, maybe he was a friend of Aaron.
Re: Releasing my book "Hacking the Xbox" as a free PDF in honor of Aaron Swartz
#30By the way, what happened to MIT's probe into their handling of Aaron's case? They said it would take a few weeks but it's been almost 2 months now.