XBOX DVD Firmware Hacked

[Cova]

And this time, it's been released to the public.

The modified DVD firmware has been released for the Toshiba-Samsung H943 Xbox 360 DVD drive. Just like Commodore4Eva's modified Xbox1 FW, it will need raw/unmodified dumps (of same region as your console if game is region locked), some patching (security sector on ISO and DVD drive key on firmware), DVD+DL (yes double layers!) recordable discs and a DVD burner that allows to put DVD+R DL booktype to DVDRom to work. This release comes with tools to make this all as easy as possible. Also included is a 2nd firmware that will allow you to extract the security sector (what you have to patch on the raw ISO) from an original discs with your TS-H943 drive connected to a PC.

Of course ... try all this at own risk. Your warranty will be broken, it's certainly possible to break your Xbox 360 if you don't know what you are doing. Chances are also high MS will very fast find a method to detect this firmware via LIVE.

Lots more information and such over at http://www.xbox-scene.com/

[Shayne]

I read this yesterday and the first thing that turned me off is the basic assurance from all peeps connected to this that Microsoft will without a doubt beable to detect this hack.

[Lazybones]

Yep, just just like last generation there will be guys that purchase two just so one can be a mod box and the other can run live



This is basicly a pirate mod, it has no homebrew use.. Funny that some people will use this to pirate games on a second box when they could have purchased several retail games for that price.

[Shayne]

several...ya.  like roughly 8

[Shayne]

...though you could just buy the core unit

[Cova]

While MS could detect the hack released so far, its still a milestone that there is now a hack in the wild that allows people to copy games - the next move is MS's now, we'll see how they reply.  Also, this type of hack can theoretically be made to be undetectable.  So far all they've done is modify the firmware to always report an authentic MS game disk is inserted, even if its a DVD-R.  But there's nothing stopping them from also modifying the firmware to report back to the xbox that the firmware hasn't changed (hard for MS to detect), and even to ignore (return success) commands to update the firmware, making it almost impossible for MS to detect or undo the hack.

[Shayne]

Always possible to release a v1.1 360 making more checks and such

[Cova]

Just read about another minor extension of this hack.  There are now instructions out there on how to solder an additional flash chip onto the DVD drive with a little switch, such that you can store 2 firmwares on the drive and switch between them with the flick of a switch.  Unplug network line and flick switch - play copied games.  Plug network back in and flick switch - play purchased games on live with no fear of being banned.



Now - how long till someone takes my idea from my previous post and combines it with dual flash chips.  Hacked flash in the main chip allows you to boot copied games, and intercepts all BIOS-related calls (whether to read or write information) and points them at the second chip that contains MS original firmware to fool anything the 360 does to try and detect hacks.

[Lazybones]

Sad thing is that MS put all that hard work into securing the main system only to have the drive worked around by a simple call that reports the disk type.



I think it was more important for MS to lock out pirates than it was for them to lock out home brew.. but so far it is the opposite.