Icrontic had the chance to interview the famous Xbox hacker from MIT, Andrew Shane Huang (aka "bunnie"). Andrew almost single handedly cracked the Xbox. He was the first one to dump the BIOS image from the Xbox and continued to perform several other Xbox hacks and modifications. This is his story...
I've always taken apart video game consoles...in particular, my PhD advisor encouraged his students to learn from the design of game consoles. They represent, in many ways, the pinnacle of high performance, low cost computing. My work on the Xbox is pretty much just routine hacking, but it really got interesting because of the tight security implemented in its design. It's like one of those finger puzzles that you play with for hours--trying to get the ball out of the cage, or what not, except it's trying to get your code to run on the Xbox. I hardly play any games on my video game consoles-- the most challenging and addictive game for me is hacking them. When I do want to play a game, I usually turn on my gamecube or GBA...and sometimes my PC.
What inspired you to hack the Xbox?
I was "inspired" by the challenge it presented in its security system. It was like choosing the red pill and seeing how far down the rabbit hole things went...every time a new part of the Xbox security was mapped out, everyone would look at each other and be like, man, they were really paranoid!
Were you challenged by the Xbox in any way?
Again, see above...the Xbox security was pretty challenging. And the bigger the challenge, the more interesting it is. I haven't really hacked on the gamecube much, or the PS2, because they don't present the same level of challenge or personal satisfaction. Well, the PS2's security has already been cracked, and the gamecube...I think its security is more practical, although less cryptographically sound. The little I know about it indicates that the gamecube uses less crypto and more hardware obscurity to make it more difficult to hack. This is, in my opinion, a superior approach for consoles because the goal is not to create a floating castle with spires and gilded doors, but just a dirt berm high enough to make any illegal operation non-profitable.
This is a very interesting interview with this already legendary Xbox hacker. There is a lot to read about the Xbox hacking, his personal life and Microsoft. You can read the full story here.
Source: Icrontic
