Hackers have taken their first few steps to breaking the Xbox 360 game protection in just under a month of the consoles release. A group of crackers calling themselves Team PI coder say they have figured out the basic workings of the consoles file system. This has let the group dump raw data of 13 Xbox 360 games data already, though they have not been able to get data off the game discs. The data was dumped to a Dutch site along with a program the helps dump the data.
Microsoft was quick to respond that the console has several security measures in place to stop the running of unauthorised games. The Team PI coder group say that nothing can be done with the data at this current moment of time but that sooner or later you will.
The raw data of games that they have dumped will be of little use as it is the data that is created when the Xbox 360 starts a game. The group said that they had released the raw data to help other groups and coders out their figured out how the Microsoft Xbox 360 stops piracy. They also went on to say the release of data will hopefully make others take up the challenge.
Using the raw data will prove a challenge as the raw data will not be booted by the Xbox 360 as it still contains all the copy protection information to stop unauthorised games. Also the Xbox 360 uses non standard DVD game discs meaning that no DVD writer or DVD drive will be able to read or write these discs.
Microsoft said that a series of improvements to the Xbox 360 have been added to protect against hackers. It said that only games authorised and signed by Microsoft would run on the system and that unauthorised ones would refuse to run.
In response Microsoft said its console had several security systems in place that would prevent pirated games being played on it. Information about the work of Team PI Coder was posted to a Dutch piracy site along with the raw data from the games. There was also links to a small program the group produced that helps to extract the data. In the text file with the extracted data, the PI Coders admit that not much can be done with the data. "You can't run these dumps yet, but you will be able to sooner or later," reads the information file.
Using the raw data could prove a challenge because the extraction has left intact the protection systems that ensure that copies will not run on an Xbox 360. The non-standard format of Xbox 360 DVDs also means that a PC DVD drive will not read them either. A spokesman for Microsoft said there had been a series of improvements to the Xbox 360 that protect it against cracking. He said that hardware on the system only allows Microsoft certified and signed programs to run on the console. This meant that copied games would not be recognised by the system and would not run. |
Source: BBC NEWS
