Hacking the Xbox by Andrew 'bunnie' Huang - free ebook

[lopgok]

I know this is free and might belong under freebies, but I thought it was more appropriate here.

This is a free pdf download from no starch press, in honor of Aaron Schwartz.
Bunnie was a MIT graduate student who hacked the X-Box, and was threatened by Microsoft.
This book documents the story of how he successfully hacked the X-Box.

http://nostarch.com/xboxfree

 

[BenJeremy]

Cool book, lots of great information. Shame they didn't cover the homebrew scene more. OpenXDK never really got off the ground, and Xbox Linux was also pretty spotty. Homebrew using the widely available "official" XDK was where it was at.

I released all my stuff as source, leaving it up to the user to compile it (though somebody always seemed to release the binaries already compiled, heh).

It would have been nice for the homebrew scene to at least have gotten a nod in the book. Written in 2003, I had already released X-Marbles and early versions of MXM before that book was published. It was a pretty good scene by December 2002.

I guess they wanted to keep it as clean as possible. Bunny's story was later paralleled by Geohot in many ways. Strangely, though, Microsoft was never vindictive or aggressively pursued hackers the way Sony does.

 

[evanb07]

Thanks. I think I must know more about it.

 

[KoolAidKid]

Thanks, appreciate the heads up.

 

[Keeper]

Can someone advise WHY you want to hack an Xbox?

I googled it and saw MOSTLY bad stuff.

the one think I saw was "Hack it to allow a non MS hard drive on it".

I bought a NON MS hard drive off Ebay. LONG time ago.
60 gigs... CHEAP. Did I just get lucky?
Or did Shanghi hack (Modify) their HD to work on the 360??

Man I need to get out more.

 

[darkewaffle]

Assuming this is about hacking the original Xbox, it could be made into a pretty sweet little media center. I put a 300GB hard drive and a ton of tv shows on mine, plus you could play games off the HD for better load times. I loved that old thing.

 

[BenJeremy]

Can someone advise WHY you want to hack an Xbox?

I googled it and saw MOSTLY bad stuff.

the one think I saw was "Hack it to allow a non MS hard drive on it".

I bought a NON MS hard drive off Ebay. LONG time ago.
60 gigs... CHEAP. Did I just get lucky?
Or did Shanghi hack (Modify) their HD to work on the 360??

Man I need to get out more.

What "bad stuff" are you talking about?

This is the original Xbox, and XBMC (and the fork known as "Boxee"), the monster media center software used in may HTPCs these days came out of the homebrew scene. It was originally "XBMP" and designed solely to play movies. Today, many people use original Xboxes as media centers.

As for the rest of it, expanding the hard drive was a large part of it, as well as playing lots of homebrew apps (including emulators), games and such. You could also set up your hard drive to play all the games you owned directly from the drive (putting the discs away and saving the optical drive from additional wear and tear) using menu systems like my own MXM (Media X Menu).

You could have movies, music, and thousands of games available on your Xbox, without ever having to reach for their cases in your cabinet.

 

[ImpulsE69]

yea hacking the original was a blast. So many things you could use it for.

 

[Keeper]

What "bad stuff" are you talking about?

This is the original Xbox, and XBMC (and the fork known as "Boxee"), the monster media center software used in may HTPCs these days came out of the homebrew scene. It was originally "XBMP" and designed solely to play movies. Today, many people use original Xboxes as media centers.

As for the rest of it, expanding the hard drive was a large part of it, as well as playing lots of homebrew apps (including emulators), games and such. You could also set up your hard drive to play all the games you owned directly from the drive (putting the discs away and saving the optical drive from additional wear and tear) using menu systems like my own MXM (Media X Menu).

You could have movies, music, and thousands of games available on your Xbox, without ever having to reach for their cases in your cabinet.

The bad stuff started with hacking the console and or controlers to play hacked games or to be better at "twitch" games.
The "bad stuff ended with links to hacking XBOX live accounts.


You know, standard mixed bag of "Search results".

I typed in "Hacking XBOX" on google.

 

[Raptor2]

Thanks for the tip!

 

[BenJeremy]

The bad stuff started with hacking the console and or controlers to play hacked games or to be better at "twitch" games.
The "bad stuff ended with links to hacking XBOX live accounts.


You know, standard mixed bag of "Search results".

I typed in "Hacking XBOX" on google.

Well, for the mainstream community of people with hacked xboxes, it wasn't about messing with Xbox Live. In fact, we (as in those of us moving the scene) applauded Microsoft's action to prevent modded xboxes from logging into Live. Cheating on single player games is one thing... cheating in multiplayer games is wrong on many levels.

As for hacking Live accounts, not sure how modded xboxes come into play for that.

Many people had two xboxes, one hacked, one not, or had a mod chip that allowed you to swap BIOSes pretty easily (IIRC, I believe some later modded BIOSes patched to prevent accidental Live access), so you could play unmodded on Live.

Now... there still was a large number of kiddies (tweens or young teens) who modded their Xboxes then panicked when cut off from Live, over fear from their parent's reactions, which led to desperate calls to "hack" Live to restore their console - and plenty of responses from others willing to victimize those kiddies. That was just dumb and dumber finding a way to be dumb. Nobody who was serious into the xbox hacking scene put up with that nonsense on the big sites (like xbox-scene, where I am still a moderator)

 

[ImpulsE69]

Well, for the mainstream community of people with hacked xboxes, it wasn't about messing with Xbox Live. In fact, we (as in those of us moving the scene) applauded Microsoft's action to prevent modded xboxes from logging into Live. Cheating on single player games is one thing... cheating in multiplayer games is wrong on many levels.

As for hacking Live accounts, not sure how modded xboxes come into play for that.

Many people had two xboxes, one hacked, one not, or had a mod chip that allowed you to swap BIOSes pretty easily (IIRC, I believe some later modded BIOSes patched to prevent accidental Live access), so you could play unmodded on Live.

Now... there still was a large number of kiddies (tweens or young teens) who modded their Xboxes then panicked when cut off from Live, over fear from their parent's reactions, which led to desperate calls to "hack" Live to restore their console - and plenty of responses from others willing to victimize those kiddies. That was just dumb and dumber finding a way to be dumb. Nobody who was serious into the xbox hacking scene put up with that nonsense on the big sites (like xbox-scene, where I am still a moderator)

LOL. As long as I've been on the internet, I've always had a "site" I regular. That site used to be my primary daily go to long before Anandtech

 

[ibex333]

Dont want to start an argument, but I totally agree with this quote from the article:

"I echo Larry Lessig’s notion that the US legal system needs a sense of shame. To an outsider like me, it seems that certain prosecutors in the US government are obsessed with making a name for themselves at the expenses of the individuals they pursue. Winning cases gains them the recognition and credibility needed for promotions and assignments to ever higher profile cases. For them, it’s not about justice—it’s about victory and self-aggrandizement."

Except the same thing goes not just for prosecutors, but for lawyers and doctors as well. Its only rarely about justice or helping people. Most of the time its solely about money.

 

[007ELmO]

I do not trust doctors in USA, and I was born here. Any doctor, you name it. Even veterinarians. There is an idea that doctors are extremely intelligent people. A doctor who gets Bs and Cs, still graduates the same as a doctor who gets As. Do you know the difference when you see them?

 

[dud]

yea hacking the original was a blast. So many things you could use it for.

Agreed ... especially XBMC. Those were the days ...

 

[dagamer34]

I do not trust doctors in USA, and I was born here. Any doctor, you name it. Even veterinarians. There is an idea that doctors are extremely intelligent people. A doctor who gets Bs and Cs, still graduates the same as a doctor who gets As. Do you know the difference when you see them?

Actually graduating with a medical degree and getting licensed is so difficult that it's rare you'll find someone new who is knowledge deficient. Bedside manner is another thing, but you can't "teach" that.

 

[ArJuN]

(like xbox-scene, where I am still a moderator)

I thought I recognized your handle. This thread caused some serious nostalgia.