Ban wave

Anyone who has a modded disc drive or visits Xbox-scene already knows that there is a new ban wave on the rise even with the latest firmware 1.61 I have been victim to this ban and have been banned on a console with a 1:1 backup kreon, no early releases or patching involved. So just a heads up. C4eva is looking into this as we speak.

 

Apparently according to my friend IGN said that Microsoft said they got 300 people and counting.

excuse the grammar its late

 

I tested conection for xbl on 1.5 and it worked fine, then I updated to 1.61 conected with mw2 and got banned instantly right when I tried to sign in.

 

I got hit on Forza 3 which was a good rip, but only because I played it early.

Got an elite though from a kind friend though so i'm fine. Still, I hope c4eva finds out what's up.

Also doesn't ASSEMblergames disapprove of warez talk? Just wondering.

 

Oh to add to my statement, I played MW2 on a seperate account online alot, just not the day they started banning for it, or any time after, and I'm not banned on that box.

 

Its not warez talk if its a backup. It is concerning the firmware modification of the Xbox360. A lot of random people are getting hit so if you haven't been hit yet man they are still racking it up. 300 and counting huh? I guess Microsoft hasn't realized this IS SPARTA!

 

This topic on Se7ensins had quite the discussion about this. It ended with a moderator closing the topic, and saying, "I'm just going to close this thread. C4E says iXtreme is still undetectable, and I'll trust him way before anyone else."

Someone in that topic said:

That's not a bad theory to me

 

In all fairness it really doesn't matter if you play a backup online or offline. People get banned by connecting to Live their first time after playing backups offline.

Se7ensins is a website mostly consisting of corrupt moderators and so called "experts" that know nothing about anything. XeNoN.7 and I had our share of experiences with them. As for the theory it feels very unsolid. If Microsoft thought they could thort pirates as soon as they could they would, otherwise they would have done it for ODST. Plus they have caught Pirates in the past before using reviewer copies of games and they did not wait on their "big wave" they banned them instantly. I think Microsoft finally figured out a new method of detection that much is certain. It also doesn't matter what version firmware you are using or even if your backup is fine or not. People who make their own backups with a kreon drive such as myself (except for early ODST but I purchased it when it came out and that was on a complete seperate box from mine which is banned) have gotten banned and have not done unsafe practices such as ie, activation discs or early playing. It doesn't seem to matter who you are bans are coming in at all shapes in sizes. One good theory I have come across is we were warned about using the 360 as a power source to flash our drives as it was concidered flagged in the NXE. This was quickly dismissed as no ban waves existed then and the source was never checked as credible information so its something worth checking out because I was banned 2 days after my 1.6>1.61 upgrade and did nothing different. However still reports coming in of people never touching their firmware for months or playing online that have suffered a ban. There has also been to my knowledge confirmed cases of people being banned without ever playing a backup but simply owning a flashed box they had purchased off craigslist out of the box flashed and had owned it before NXE and never played a backup. This is quite an interesting case and I am more curious than anything to see how ol' Microsoft is doing it.

 

PS: is edit button gone or am I just high? Can't fix spelling mistakes...

 

Can't you just set a 3 minute time limit on the edit button? I am one of those people whom post and even though I have re-read something I later notice mistakes or ways I could have worded something better. Just a suggestion.

 

Sorry for being offtopic: but whats wrong with users moderating themselfs? if they cleanup their own crap it spares the mods some work.
Sometimes people miscommunicate, misread, misunderstand and react emotionally to something, and even if you have to think about what you post it's a fact that shit will happen (alot!) I forsee alot of flame wars, mod cleanups and theads closing and such :-(

As for MS: you can't have it all, if you want to play backups then it's a fact that you will be banned one day so choose sides or buy 2 360's as they are cheap.. and you are sparing out in buying games anyway, download 4 games and get the second 360 for free lol :rambo:

 

The issue is the moderators are not here every 2 mins to check what people post. So what happens is someone starts an argument and then an hour or two later and about 20 posts after he decides to edit all their posts in the argument. Then it makes it rather hard for us to see what pricks they are being.

 

OK true that, I thought that you guys could see all the edits/history if that is not the case then I understand the decision.
Tho I would prefer a 5 or 10 min allow to fix spelling errors.. as these pages are being indexed by search engines and the waybackmachine I don't think we want to go down in history as morons unable to spell correctly :lol:

Sorry for the offtopic again.

 

I don't own a 360, nor do I keep up with it, but I do like talking about security. So in regards to all these bans, isn't it as simple as checking your firmware with some hash and microsoft just flagging you?

As for saving up bans for a mass attack, It sounds plausible that Microsoft might choose to do that. I mean satellite companies for instance have issued ECM’s to receivers just before events like the super bowl, so I don't see why that doesn't translate to other media equally as well.

 

In all honesty, I totally avoided flashing my 360 because I knew there was a possibility that at some point I could get banned, or whatnot because having a flashed 360 makes you really tempted to play games like MW 2 or ODST prior to their release. I have a 360, XDK and my brother just got himself a 360, so although I could use his if mine got banned, I'm somewhat short on money and therefore don't want to risk it. I did although d/l MW 2 the other day and I finished the campaign. (on my XDK) Theres no way in hell that I would ever go into matchmaking on my dev though because that's just asking for a ban. Obviously from what I hear if you have a flashed 360 it doesn't really make much of a difference to whether you get banned or not if you play it in matchmaking online, but that story where a guy never even ran a backup on his flashed 360 is intriguing, as you woulda thought it would at least be due to playing a game offline early, or being stupid enough to play it online early. I don't know all that much about flashed Xbox's, but I know enough that usually someone wouldn't get banned for simply having the firmware flashed because I have no clue how they detected it. I agree with lllsondowlll that microsoft must have just found a new way or a breakthrough in detecting certain versions (or just most of the people with flashed xboxes) and just used it to ban many people at once. I personally doubt that they would wait for a while to ban someone, usually they're smart enough that they would ban them instantly as in my opinion it's just stupid from their aspect to wait up for a while after you've gathered 300+ people and then ban them instantaneously; it would be done individually or w/e as soon as they found it (I believe). I could be totally wrong, but that's just what I think.

 

Waiting for a mass ban wave serves one very important goal...confusion.

You ban people individually and it is easier to track a pattern.

You wait a month an do it in rolling waves and it becomes a lot harder to identify the trigger.

Impossible, no. Security through obscurity can always be beaten. But if you don't know what you're looking for it does make the search that much more difficult.

-hl718

 

Well, regardless if they choose to wait or not, they still know who's account is an offender. There really isn't any monitary loss at this point. It would make sense to kill all the box's before a major release because it makes the "satisfaction" level of owning a mod that much more worse for the owners.

It's like the bus services going on strike during the summer vs the dead of winter. Sure, both cases require the user to find an alternative, but during summer people don't really care as much. But during that unlucky week a blizzard is in town, people go up and arms at a strike!