Xbox 360 disc authentication has successfully been hacked

March 20, 2006

Last December, crackers have succeeded in breaking the DVD file system on the Xbox 360, however up until now, in an aim to prevent the running of unauthorised applications on the Xbox360, Microsoft has designed it such that it will only run applications signed by Microsoft. As original Xbox360 games are signed by Microsoft, to prevent one playing a 1:1 disc duplicate, the disc type is embedded in the disc's software. This means that if one attempts to copy the disc, the Xbox360 will see that the disc type is not a dvdxbox360 disc (mismatches the disc type in the content) and thus will not play. The signature on the content also makes it virtually impossible to change the content's disc type.

However, what hackers have discovered is that the Xbox360's firmware is not signed, so in order to prevent the Xbox360 from detecting that a copied disc is of the wrong disc type, they have managed to create a modified firmware that ignores this check during the boot stage. By updating the firmware with this modified firmware, they have succeeded in being able to play official Xbox360 games copied onto recordable DVD+/-R.

Despite this success in modifying the firmware, there is currently no means of installing this firmware without some sort of hardware programmer and those involved in breaking the firmware are also against piracy and will not release their modified firmware (apart from a video to show their success). As the hardware programmer would need to be soldered in, there is a good chance that this will not be available as a simple mod for the average consumer, even if this modified firmware was available. Thanks to DamnedIfIknow for letting us know about this news:

TheSpecialist and his team was able modify the DVD player firmware. Once the firmware was modified the hackers removed or modified the software that detects the type of media used in the player from the disc's XEX file. Normally, if the drive reads the type of media as a "dvd+r" or "dvd-r," the media will not boot -- only media with the "dvdxbox" or "dvdxbox360" are supposed to boot. A user on the Maxconsole forums (Arakon) close to the source has stated that this hack does not circumvent region protection and only 1:1 copies of games of the same region will work.

Some further info can be read on this bog and also on this earlier article.

For Microsoft, this is bad news, since even if the modified firmware is not public and consumers would need soldering skills to even connect up a programmer, chances are that soon other hackers will succeed in repeating this modification with an aim to distribute or sell their modified firmware. One other thing Microsoft really does not want to see is something like that of the original Xbox consoles where consumers modded the console to run home-brew code, install an operating system, etc.

DamnedIfIknow added: Sounds pretty legit to me. Security is only as strong as its weakest point and it looks like they found it.

Feel free to discuss about the Xbox 360 on our Console forum.

Source: DailyTech - Gadgets