Why was the Original Xbox so easy to crack

can anyone explain to me why the original Xbox was so easy to crack and get crazy homebrew applications out the door? I heard it was alot of mistakes on microsofts part such as the tsop being able to be flashed easily (or something to that extent its been a few years)or was it the XDK that got stolen that sealed the deal with that?

 

it wasnt that easy, but was mostly thanks to 1 guy called bunnie, who did the first mod (some 40+ wires soldiered)

but once that waws explotableand the xdk was leaked, it was realativly easy to port apps and games etc straight from the pc ports due to the nature of the xbox itself

someone can probably explain a whole lot better than me, but im too lazy to go into details

 

Part of it lied with the switch from an Athlon chip to the Pentium3, I don't fully understand the technical stuff behind it but the way the athlon handled a function prevented the user from getting some data the Penitum 3 did. I think that would be the "secret code" hidden in the GPU.

The fact MS left the LPC header on just made it INCREDIBLY convienent for adding a modchip in.

 

http://video.google.com/videoplay?d...368&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=2

Should be all you ever need to know hah

 

http://www.xbox-linux.org/wiki/17_Mistakes_Microsoft_Made_in_the_Xbox_Security_System is a text form of Michael's speech.

My understanding is that they just didn't cared much on security (like microsoft in general, 8 years ago) back, so they had a much too optimistic view on that.

That also explains how microsoft has improved so much - they actually had the ability (=manpower, money, marketing) to learn from their failures. Compare their today's view on security with what they had 8 years ago.

Plus on the Xbox, they simply made a lot of implementation mistakes. But Michael's paper sums that up pretty good.


And of course it was that there was a huuuuuuge interest in the original xbox. I wouldn't consider the Wii to be more secure than the original Xbox (until anybody prooves me that there is more required than dumping the bootstrap once), still it's unhacked. Why? Simply because there was no bunnie yet who attached wires to it. (And while bunnie certainly is an exceptional hacker, don't underestimate other hackers. What I want to say is that for these kinds of systems it just takes one good hacker with the right ideas and enough time.)

360 and PS3 are probably another thing. Their hardware is much, MUCH stronger. Still the software could/did mess it up. We'll see.

 

Basically:
Booted OS\code of the HDD
Used x86. Everyone loves x86.
Had a HDD and LAN, versatile to load\store files
Easy to make\port games\apps.

Edit: LOL on the kernal panic in the vid. I've seen too many of them trying to get OSx86 running on my nForce system

 

Don't forget that they were the first to try to prevent people running code on their console. Other manufacturers have only tried to stop you copying or making unauthroised games.

With hindsight it's easy to pretend to be a security expert and LOL at microsoft, but everyone has to learn somewhere. It was something new to them and they got caught because everyone loves to hack microsoft stuff.

If you want to LOL at anyone, it's the hackers who even bothered on such an easy system.

smf

 

Another fact is that the XDK was very well made and very intuitive, unlike many consol SDK which are quite obscure : XDK integrates itself completely and perfectly in a standard windows development environment and comes with many great sample codes that helped much development (until very recently, many dashboards et apps used parts from xdk samples), and this proven by the huge amount of xbox homebrews you can find, unlike the other scene where it was way less active.

 

Simply because it was a PC.

 

damn good video i dare to say.

I just educated myself thanks to it!

cheers guys

 

bunnie's book does a great deal of explaining of what he did and how things worked (or was supposed to work on MS's part).

 

awesome video!
but I have some questions myself,I came up with this a few days ago, I dont know if its stupid or doable but I would like your opinion.

AFAIK the 2 main ways to mod/exploit the xbox all involve opening your box or getting a memory card.

I dont have a modchip and I dont want to open/void my green LE xbox to put one, and the memory card exploits involve a memory card which I would have to buy in ebay or hack a usb stick. Both of these will cost me some €...

So as I stared at the xbox's dashboard I had an idea! when you connect to live sometimes the dash gets updated, cant this be exploited as well?
Imagine someone creating a live linux cd which made your pc act as a Xbox live server and trigger an update on the xbox with a modified/hacked dash.

Another question I have, has the DVD protection ever been cracked? anyone ever made a 1:1 backup of a Xbox game that booted without a mod just like an original??

btw I have no real interest for a modchip besides playing imports, I dont really care about backups,I dont need the emulators as I have most of the real systems and the rest I can emulate on the PC, same for divx.

on a final note I think it would be nice if Microsoft released a final dash update as a goodbye present,with some HTPC functionality and some stuff like that

 

Without access to a dvd press this would be virtually impossible due to how the discs are pressed and identified to the xbox. Even with access to the press it would still be hard to pull off, but not impossible unless someone knows further details that I do not.

 

Yeah you can soft mod with the hacked save file and memory card. I have the files if you want them. I also did a video tutorial on how to do it on youtube. anyway, it will let you play imports if that's all you want it for. PM me for more infor.

 

But like I said in my previous post, I would still need a memory card or hack a USB stick

 

actually it's just the cable you would need to make. snip snip solder 4 wires.

 

Agreed. Very nice presentation, thanks! :thumbsup:

 

yeah it pretty much answered every question i've had as to "why the hell did this thing get busted so wide open so quickly?"

 

plus the fact that ms were noobs when they came in

 

If you're going to keep reviving threads that are half a year old, at least try to add some content. Spamming just to raise your post count is dumb.

-hl718