Xplorer360 grants read/write access to Xbox storage?

We can't confirm or deny this yet, but a couple of guys but the handles of Roofus and AngerWound whipped up a program called Xplorer360 v0.9 (Beta 1), which supposedly grants full read/write access to the Xbox 360's hard drive and memory units, including physical / logical drive access for performing backups, dumps, restores, and the like -- which could well lead to the first real 360 homebrew hacks. So for the few of you that'll probably get the actual app before the rest of the world wakes up, finds out, and crashes their and any caching servers, care to leave comments on your experiences below?

[Via Xbox-Scene, thanks Tech Sweden]

[damian @ Feb 13th 2006 10:32AM]

Unless you can make it run unsigned code, which you can't (and most likely never will) homebrew on the 360 just aint gonna happen

[doug rosenfeld @ Feb 13th 2006 10:40AM]

here is the thread
http://forums.xbox-scene.com/index.php?showtopic=489606
and it appears a guy is making a tut so we can convert the sata connection on 360 to a normal sata plug

[Quizzle @ Feb 13th 2006 11:07AM]

Thanks Captain Obvious. ;)

I wouldn't say never.

[HackedLife @ Feb 13th 2006 11:07AM]

Sony said the same thing, and look at everything you can do with the PSP now. Anyway, the purpose of that software is not for pirating games, its for uploading/downloading 360 game saves from the net and copying them to your 360 HDD.

[charlie @ Feb 13th 2006 11:08AM]

wow, everything is "unhackable" but where there's a will, there's a way

hacking ANYTHING is just a matter of time. there are some crazy people out there.

[GunForHire @ Feb 13th 2006 11:38AM]

Sweet! This is so much more practical for moving my MP3 collection to the HDD than having to write and rewrite a CDRW all the time. Plus it means if you buy a bigger new HDD in the future hopefully you'll be able to copy everything over to it :D

[pete @ Feb 13th 2006 11:41AM]

i never get the corporate myrmidons who say "OMG THEY ARE WASTING THERE TIME, IT IS RALLY UNHACKABLE!" what's with you freaks? when will you realize that virtually *anything* - and I say this with only love - is hackable?! sure, that doesn't mean the NSA's servers are, but with a consumer end product that's distributed and left in the hands of thousands of consumers with computers, time, and of course, WILL, it's always a matter of time. computer people (not gods) designed the security; computer people will break it.

[Mike @ Feb 13th 2006 11:54AM]

Why do people "waste their time" hacking stuff? The same reason corporations take the time to include DRM... Because They Can.

[portorikan @ Feb 13th 2006 12:18PM]

So this is an app for Windows only?

Hey, can you use it to adjust the amount of space taken to run old xbox games and updates?

[g0atbutt @ Feb 13th 2006 12:22PM]

This program works, and anything from AngerWound is legit (if any of you rember the soft mods of the xbox 1 days)

[[e-mail] @ Feb 13th 2006 12:27PM]

NagraVision I was replaced by ver II. Which was also thought to be "unhackable" because Dishnetwork spends millions on replacing their access card. In the Dish TV case, they can even update the access card to further secure the card in the future. Did I mention everything was encrypted in 128bit?

Hacked within a month of the release and remained so today. A good $50 mil down the toilet.

[Alex Quinn @ Feb 13th 2006 12:28PM]

Worked for me, i was able to transfer a file from my friends box to mine. Gamer Points don't update though :(

[damian @ Feb 13th 2006 12:42PM]

To all the folks that warble on about everything being hackable may I point you to exhibit A the DirectTV P4 access card released in 2002 is still uncompromised. When you control the design of the silicon it is entirely feasable to make an uncrackable system.

[Nyutan @ Feb 13th 2006 1:09PM]

.. Even The Pentagon is Hackable. And it's supposed to be more advanced than the Xbox 360. So.. Xbox 360 is gonna be hacked. No one can say when though.

[Shawn Oster @ Feb 13th 2006 1:15PM]

As long as you can't use this to get achivements/gamerpoints then it sounds like an interesting idea. Though I don't really see much point. Why would you want to play someone else's save game? It's like letting someone else sleep with your girlfriend and you show up at the end to cuddle.

Also why would you rip music to the 360 instead of your home PC and use Media Connect to stream the music in-game? Who out there is already running out of room for their save games? Interesting idea but I don't really get it.

[Matt @ Feb 13th 2006 1:24PM]

Does it work with the original Xbox? I don't believe there was ever a working windows tool for this. BTW, how do you connect the memory cards to your computer? I have an external laptop hard drive enclosure, so that would probably work for the hard drive. Now, if only I had a 360...

[Sam @ Feb 13th 2006 1:33PM]

Could someone confirm that using this program leaves no trace of itself on the Xbox360? I trusted a program like this for the Xbox and got my Xbox Live account suspended because of it and because of the implications (what is to stop you from slipping in some gamesaves to get yourself an assload of gamerpoints?) I could see why Microsoft would want this hole closed and fast.

[az1324 @ Feb 13th 2006 2:24PM]

To #13:

I think that has a lot to do with the fact that the DirecTV card is not used very widely. Its not unhackable by a longshot. Compare it to the Dish card which is used everywhere. It was hacked in Spain. The more people trying, the greater the chance for success. The game console hacking community is huge and there is a way bigger drive to hack them.

[junkcurator @ Feb 13th 2006 3:34PM]

can this tool be used to transfer videos...(which would actually be playable) the only thing that bothers me about xbox 360 is that it does not allow streaming of video from your 'windows xp'. If MS had added that facility, I would have been contended with my xbox 360...

Other thing which I would have liked to see was an integration of more HD input support. For eg. my direct tv HD input could have gone into xbox 360, thus making only one HD connection to my TV from xbox, and xbox could have provided the facility to switch between the signal I want to see.

Thier home entertainment center promise did not work completely.

[c.Lake @ Feb 13th 2006 3:35PM]

Once again, Microsoft as under estimated what 2 guys, in their basement can do, with a lot of patients and time on there hands.

Fanboys - 1
Microsoft � 0

[Yem @ Feb 13th 2006 4:31PM]

No, not EVERYTHING is hackable. For starters, there's a window of opportunity. Let's say four years, then a new console comes along. Then there's strong encryption. I'm pretty confident that no one is snooping on my ssh connection or my online banking. Has 3DES or Blowfish been "broken" in the last four years? So the 360 implements these algorithms DEEP in hardware and uses those same processes to validate that hardware. The vulnerabilities are in the implementation of the checks that bootstrap the whole process. If the engineers have done their job right, it'll be airtight and I seriously doubt it'll be broken in four years. Chances are, they haven't. With so many parties involved in hardware and software devel, someone will probably screw up sooner or later and there will be a way to run unsigned code. But I don't think the possibility of simply modchipping the box is by any means guaranteed. Fingers crossed though, eh? I hate that I have to spend about $600 on an XBMC box just because the 360 (which has ample processing power) will only play video from Live or WinMCE.

[MyGrover @ Feb 13th 2006 4:35PM]

Being able to transfer savegames and HDD info is going to be a huge deal when the 360 starts up MMO games, with FFXI not that far off. Since characters and profiles are selling for real money, there is more of a problem.

[James @ Feb 13th 2006 5:18PM]

#21, You just contradicted yourself. Everything IS hackable, but there is a window of opportunity. I'm sure with parallel systems, 3DES or Blowfish will be cracked, but by then, something better might have / would have replaced them. So by then, cracking 3DES or Blowfish may have been just a breakthrough but worthless. Same thing with X360, if some hackers found a way to run unsigned code on it 10 years down the line, whatever destined to replace the X360 would be the thing to have and not the X360 itself.

[Yem @ Feb 13th 2006 5:53PM]

Ok, "usefully" hackable then :-) I'll concede that everything is hackable given enough time even if no one cares by that point.

[wibwib @ Feb 13th 2006 5:59PM]

21. Comparing a full computer system like the 360 to a particular encryption system is apples and oranges. Encryption systems can be checked in a mathematically rigorous way, while a computer system can not. The hard part is key management, and the compromise between speed and security.

It is too computationally expensive to have an end to end encryption system for all datapaths, so you have to have plain text data running, with the hope that it can't be intercepted. I think the 360 will be more difficult to crack than the XBox, but it will happen, and in the next 2 years (IMO)

[Osiris @ Feb 13th 2006 6:25PM]

Nothing is hack proof.
There will always be a way to hack a piece of software, just as a monkey will eventually write a piece of Shakespear with enough time...

The more people that use a service, the more likely/quickly it is to be taken apart.
The closest you can get to unhackable would be to have frequent updates on potentially exploitable areas of code or recently discovered holes.

Some examples? Sony on PSP firmware, Microsoft on Windows OSes.

[shawn @ Feb 13th 2006 8:01PM]

This is a business. People make tons of money off this, they will eventually break it. They have smarter people learning and doing what they can to crack it. Different groups. The first one who makes a mod chip, will have millions sold in the first month and be producing more chips. The thing they will have to do first is to allow the xbox 360 to not update key componnents in the protection it has. It may take longer then they like, yet nothing is fool proof, and nothing can keep out an industry that is waiting to turn profits.

[roach @ Feb 13th 2006 8:20PM]

finally, I hav sum questions (can this be used to play vids on the 360, and can u copy aracde games/play them on ur pc from this(as their in flash))

[roach @ Feb 13th 2006 8:21PM]

finally, I hav sum questions (can this be used to play vids on the 360, and can u copy aracde games/play them on ur pc from this(as their in flash))

[Punkuhr @ Feb 14th 2006 12:55PM]

#22 mygrover, this is a comment for you.

Have you played FFXII? Did you not realize that all the character info is stored on a server far from your reaches. Beleive me, if what you are implying is true, there would be the same thing already going on on the PS2. Profiles, maybe. Character data being tranfered, not possible.

[dumfuq @ Feb 15th 2006 11:40PM]

Unhackable is a very vague term. There are some components which will certainly be "hacked" to a varying degree. There are some piece which will most likely not be hackable. You will likely never be able to change your data on a remote server (unless of course you hack the server, which is an entirely different definition of hacking). Saying that anything is or is not hackable is ignorant. Whether or not arbitrary code can be run on this console remains to be seen, but if the developers tied all the loose ends up properly, the feasability of running unsigned code becomes less and less of a probability.

Does anybody know if the drive needs to be removed from the 360 to use the software? I'm assuming that it does. Though cool, this doesn't really seem like an amazing feat (similar things have been done countless times before). Reading a SATA drive isn't exactly rocket science. Depending on the filesystem layout, i/o interface, etc..., it might be quite easy. However, the length of time it took to get the first tool towards hacking an xbox360 out is impressive, especially due to the unit's lack of availability.

Basically my point is, you need to define "hacked" before you can say that a system has been "hacked".

[WGIII @ Feb 23rd 2006 2:41PM]

Why? Is there any other OS used by the masses.
Don't even say Apple, because all 3% of you.

[WGIII @ Feb 23rd 2006 2:42PM]

"9. So this is an app for Windows only?"

Why? Is there any other OS used by the masses.
Don't even say Apple, because all 3% of you.

[doogie @ Mar 30th 2006 5:48PM]

why didnt someone figure out how to do this with UltimateTV, I still have a couple of these boxes in use and there should be enough M$ haters out there to want to tackle this just because it is M$