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

Microsoft's 'unhackable' Xbox One has been hacked by 'Bliss'

tomshardware.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 311 posts

Re: Microsoft's 'unhackable' Xbox One has been hacked by 'Bliss'

#41

Post by scottyah »

joe_mamba wrote: post #4
Simulacra wrote: post #2

One should never call something "unhackable" ...

I wish people would take statements in relative terms along with the whole context before attempting to refute them with a quick gotcha in absolute terms. Obviously nothing is ever unhackable, not even Fort Knox, given infinite time and resources, and Microsoft never made such claims, this is just media editorializing for clicks and HN eating the bait, but Xbox One was definitely the most unhackable console of its ge…

This goes against information theory as a whole, and the point of words. How are you going to convey all this extra context to people who don't follow the space, and what word(s) do we use for something that is actually unhackable?

Literally unhackable? XD

Re: Microsoft's 'unhackable' Xbox One has been hacked by 'Bliss'

#42

Post by cocoto »

au8er wrote: post #25

This just again shows that given enough time skill, and resources, any security is pointless if the attacker has physical access to the device.

I can give you a piece of paper with a one time pad encoded secret, where the one time is physically destroyed. You can take all the time you want but you will not crack anything…

Re: Microsoft's 'unhackable' Xbox One has been hacked by 'Bliss'

#43

Post by btown »

Jerrrrrrrry wrote: post #8

Created a voltage drop that exactly occurred to be timed to the key comparison, then a spike at the continuation. Irl noop and forced execution control flow to effectively return true. B e a utiful

It's fascinating - how does one defend against an attacker or red-team who controls the CPU voltage rails with enough precision to bypass any instruction one writes? It's an entirely new class of vulnerability, as far as I can tell.

This talk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BBXKhrHi2eY indicates that others have had success doing this on Intel microcode as well - only in the past few months. Going to be some really exciting exploits coming out here!

Re: Microsoft's 'unhackable' Xbox One has been hacked by 'Bliss'

#44

Post by john_strinlai »

au8er wrote: post #25

This just again shows that given enough time skill, and resources, any security is pointless if the attacker has physical access to the device.

i find this statement is often used as an excuse to not think about security at all. which is probably not what you intended here (i hope, although you did say "pointless"...), but some people parrot it for that purpose.

a) this was a security win. millions and millions of people had physical access to the device for over a decade

b) as others have said, security is not all-or-nothing. the xbox one is extremely secure, despite not being perfectly secure.

c) just because something eventually gets hacked does not mean security was pointless. delaying access is a perfectly reasonable security goal. delaying access until the product is retired and the successor is already out on the market is a huge win.

Re: Microsoft's 'unhackable' Xbox One has been hacked by 'Bliss'

#45

Post by phantom784 »

btown wrote: post #43
Jerrrrrrrry wrote: post #8

Created a voltage drop that exactly occurred to be timed to the key comparison, then a spike at the continuation. Irl noop and forced execution control flow to effectively return true. B e a utiful

It's fascinating - how does one defend against an attacker or red-team who controls the CPU voltage rails with enough precision to bypass any instruction one writes? It's an entirely new class of vulnerability, as far as I can tell. This talk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BBXKhrHi2eY indicates that others have had success doing this on Intel microcode as well - only in the past few months. Going to be some really e…

Could a chip detect this and reset?

Re: Microsoft's 'unhackable' Xbox One has been hacked by 'Bliss'

#46

Post by msla »

btown wrote: post #43
Jerrrrrrrry wrote: post #8

Created a voltage drop that exactly occurred to be timed to the key comparison, then a spike at the continuation. Irl noop and forced execution control flow to effectively return true. B e a utiful

It's fascinating - how does one defend against an attacker or red-team who controls the CPU voltage rails with enough precision to bypass any instruction one writes? It's an entirely new class of vulnerability, as far as I can tell. This talk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BBXKhrHi2eY indicates that others have had success doing this on Intel microcode as well - only in the past few months. Going to be some really e…

You can't. Console makers have these locked-down little systems with all the security they can economically justify... embedded in an arbitrarily-hostile environment created by people who have no need to economically justify anything. It's completely asymmetrical and the individual hackers hold most of the cards. There's no "this exploit is too bizarre" for people whose hobby is breaking consoles, and if even one of those bizarre exploits wins it's game over.

And if you predict the next dozen bizarre things someone might try, you both miss the thirteenth thing that's going to work and you make a console so over-engineered Sony can kick your ass just by mentioning the purchase price of their next console. ("$299", the number that echoed across E3.)

Re: Microsoft's 'unhackable' Xbox One has been hacked by 'Bliss'

#47

Post by ZiiS »

Scaevolus wrote: post #20
stinmpy wrote: post #5

Marcus used to work for Microsoft, in the MSRC. I wonder if he used insider knowledge for this hack.

Microsoft released a video that covers effectively all of the Xbox One security system, and it's referred to extensively in the talk. The specific methods of glitching don't require any insider knowledge.

They also told everyone they added more anti glitching to later hardware revisions; which by the process of elimination tells everyone they thought this was possible. The whole initiative was a success when it gave them a year; an unqualified triumph when it gave them the whole generation; they really are not going to be to sad after 12 years.

Re: Microsoft's 'unhackable' Xbox One has been hacked by 'Bliss'

#48

Post by qingcharles »

tetrisgm wrote: post #9

This is great news. Hopefully this opens the floodgates towards emulation and homebrew. Not that there are really any exclusives, but it would be interesting.

Very few exclusives. Couple of Forzas? Halo 5? Practically everything else available elsewhere in similar quality.

Re: Microsoft's 'unhackable' Xbox One has been hacked by 'Bliss'

#49

Post by PUSH_AX »

btown wrote: post #43
Jerrrrrrrry wrote: post #8

Created a voltage drop that exactly occurred to be timed to the key comparison, then a spike at the continuation. Irl noop and forced execution control flow to effectively return true. B e a utiful

It's fascinating - how does one defend against an attacker or red-team who controls the CPU voltage rails with enough precision to bypass any instruction one writes? It's an entirely new class of vulnerability, as far as I can tell. This talk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BBXKhrHi2eY indicates that others have had success doing this on Intel microcode as well - only in the past few months. Going to be some really e…

> how does one defend against an attacker or red-team who controls the CPU voltage rails

The xbox does have defences against this, the talk explicitly mentions rail monitoring defences intended to detect that kind of attack. It had a lot of them, and he had to build around them. The exploit succeeds because he found two glitch points that bypassed the timing randomisation and containment model.

Re: Microsoft's 'unhackable' Xbox One has been hacked by 'Bliss'

#50

Post by TobTobXX »

cocoto wrote: post #42
au8er wrote: post #25

This just again shows that given enough time skill, and resources, any security is pointless if the attacker has physical access to the device.

I can give you a piece of paper with a one time pad encoded secret, where the one time is physically destroyed. You can take all the time you want but you will not crack anything…

You don't need to attack the math, if you can attack the sender or thr receiver ['s hardware].
Post reply on HN