Xbox 360 Backup Discs Bootable

An anonymous reader writes "The firmware of the Xbox 360 DVD drive has been hacked, allowing users to boot backups of games on the new Microsoft console. A group of hackers on the xboxhacker.net forum managed to trick the DVD firmware into reporting a recordable disc as an original Xbox 360 disc. This means that it will not allow booting of unsigned homebrew code (like Linux), as the signature check is not bypassed. This hack will just trick the Xbox 360 into thinking you inserted an original Xbox 360 disc, so it'll only boot unedited executables. A video has been released, the hack has not been released to the public (because it will be mainly used for piracy), but all the research of the last few months is publicly viewable."

"we don't want to support piracy"

[Quick Sick Nick]

yeah, and I read playboy for the articles.

Re:firmware check on new games?

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

How long until they hackers then change the checksums or add the obvious GOTO 30 line?

Yes, but Microsoft is cunning you see, they number their program lines one by one instead of 10 by 10, so you can't insert a GOTO line. And RENUM is disabled. Clever I tell you!

Re:"we don't want to support piracy"

[Anonymous Coward]

I read Playboy mainly for the page numbers, and the index. I mainly enjoy looking up a random page in the index, and then finding it in the magazine by binary search. I've written a program in Perl that helps me train; I type in the number of pages, and then it selects a random page for me, following a gaussian distribution (I don't want to have to find the index! lol!) and then I navigate to it. After a few years practice, I've got down to an average of less than two seconds for any given page number. I've got my girlfriend doing it now as well, we can sometimes spend entire evenings sitting down with my Linux box, seeing who can get to page 58 first! Its absolutely fantastic.

Tut, tut, tut...

[dwalsh]

the hack has not been released to the public (because it will be mainly used for piracy)
It is sad to see so much cynicism in the world :-)

Re:Forget Piracy. Solution For Disc Scratching Mes

[Ethoscapade]

it's not so much "scratching" as it is "burning a series of tiny little rings in these DVDs as if they were vinyls exactly how fast is this thing spinning jesus christ the disc is actually hot"

Re:Morality

[Haeleth]

It's clear that the submitter of the article doesn't think the moral case for this type of thing is strong enough to stand on its own. He has to help it along, and slightly mislead his audience despite the fact that the vast majority of the copies this is used for will be pirated copies rather than backup copies.

Huh? The submitter wrote, right there in the summary, "it will be mainly used for piracy". I really don't see how he could have been any blunter about it. It does not look to me like there is any attempt being made to mislead readers in any way whatsoever.

But I'm not surprised to see a response like yours. However someone phrases it, there's always someone who thinks they should have phrased it more strongly. I expect that even if the submitter had opened the article with "Filthy bloodsucking terrorist pedophile pirates have raped America's freedom once again in a savage assault on the copyright protections that keep our children safe", then someone would still have complained that he was being too sympathetic to them... ;)

Re:Ability to boot non-Microsoft code more useful

[Aranth Brainfire]

The DMCA always means something, even if it's just "Haha, boy am I glad we don't have a law like that here"

Re:netcrap confirms it

[__michikal]

Your irony, however, is not dying.

Re:"we don't want to support piracy"

[Anonymous Coward]

You are winner of Slashdot!
This website can now close down.

Re:"we don't want to support piracy"

[Retroneous]

Yeah, Playboy is great. It also shows pictures of ladies with their tits out.