First homebrew code on the Xbox 360?
By Peter Rojas 
posted March 2nd 2007 10:14AM
posted March 2nd 2007 10:14AM
This one's not for the faint of heart, but Xbox-Scene has posted up what appears to be the first recipe for cooking up homebrew code on the Xbox 360. We'd love it if Crawler360, the dude responsible for the hack, would post up a pic or two, but he or she claims that they were able to use the so-called HyperVisor exploit we mentioned the other day to get a little "Hello World" action on the box courtesy of a copy of King Kong, modified DVD firmware, and serial connection to their 360. Not sure how much further anyone will be able to take this, so don't hold your breath on the MAME emulators.[Thanks, Arun]
I read somwhere - that in order for this to infect my 360 - the guy would need physical access to my 360's HDD - correct?
If this is true, things can only get worst for Microsoft dealing with an emerging homebrew community for the 360. It would be interesting if things turned out like they did with the PSP, into a cat and mouse game of Microsoft trying to fix the homebrew vulnerabilities and the homebrew community creating an exploit to work-around the last update (although Microsoft would probably take-it a lot more seriously than Sony is).
Don't worry about it, this isn't hacking like hacking a PC, it's just getting unsigned code running on a machine... Which shouldn't run without it being signed. However, getting a Hello World app going on the 360 sure is nice to see. Keep on rockin' you crazy computer nerds!
But it's already patched which does most 360 owners little good, and comes at the expense of losing Live, unless more exploits emerge.
You need a specific kernel (can't downgrade), you have to have a modified dvd drive, you have to install a serial port, and you need the king kong game. If you have updated in the last 6 months, play on live, or don't want to open your 360, this is useless to you.
Then don't do it and stop whining! I don't get it why people always complain about things like this. It's gonna be difficult and it's not for average joe, but for the rest of us that find immense pleasure on doing something different in our consoles at whatever expense, this is great news.
I never whinned. I've been modding consoles for years and take advantage of almost every hack for every system. All I stated was that ppl who want live or already play on live cannot use this hack. Troll elsewhere.
I'm going to whine a bit, and I think I'm allowed. It's disappointing to be set up by a headline like "HOMEBREW ON 360!!!" only to find (not even in the article, but in the *comments*) that it's only on an old kernel that nobody will have anymore, and only if you are willing to do hardware mods, and it requires breaking Live, and...
I wouldn't whine if the headline had been something like "Homebrew on 360, only 6 months too late" or similar. It's just misleading to suggest that this could be useful to pretty much anybody.
They mentioned it in the previous article about the Hyper Visor Exploit which they linked to in the article. It is the one that is Blue and says Hyper Visor Exploit. It details it a bit more they most likley did not mention it because it is a continuation of the story and the people that have been following it dont want old news repeated again. Here is the link if you cant seem to find the blue lettering. http://www.engadget.com/2007/02/27/xbox-360-vulnerability-found-homebrew-could-be-just-around-the/
Excuse my blinding ignorance but....
Is it possible that the significance of this is *not* that a few people with the old kernal, not on live, etc. can run homebrew? Could it be that the ability to run unsigned code may allow a deeper understanding of the 360's protection systems and allow new exploits?