Since When Was Modifying Your Own Hardware A Crime

[Sionyn]

fake britain, this time the guy why who was flashing xbox360 drives firmware to lie about its media type allowing booting of recordable media
there plenty of legitimate reasons for hacking a xbox cheep cluster hombrew to name few, so why is a uneducated expert allowed to presume what their use is for ?

let alone his bias

why is he allowed to make things up and never his evidence scientifically tested, what is his punishment if his claims if they are unfounded (tuff luck try again old chap ?)

if i sell you a cow and tell you can use it only make milk and that if you use it for any purpose i don't see fit i will with the help of police smash down your door when i feel like it take the cow back.

or suppose you buy a car do the police presume you want it for no good ?

maybe this guy deserved it , it a slippery slope though

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b01jv96k/Fake_Britain_Series_3_Episode_11/

[Sionyn]

i don't care for this guy, but i care if corporations are allowed to do this other people like us who like to mod our hardware

today its him tomorrow it could be us

[LEECH666]

I guess the problem is with the local laws that prohibit to circumvent copy protections.
The XBOX 360 Glitch Hack Chips and the older JTAG hack and the drive firmware modifications are mostly aimed to only do that (circumvent DRM). Even if the initial goal of devices/hacks like these is to get homebrew software running, it's stall that: Devices/Hacks that circumvent a inbuilt DRM mechanism. And that's outlawed in many western countries by now.

I think a mod like Mike did to his Tenma PSU to update the display speed isn't really comparable to such devices.

Otherwise I totally agree, we should be allowed to do whatever we want with a piece of hardware that we bought.

[Sionyn]

the drive hack was essential for king kong hypervisor exploit which lead to JTAG exploit those shortcomings were due to frustrated users who could not do what they wanted with their hardware (programming).

how is it fair that microsoft holds a monopoly over who can or can not write software for the xbox

it is of course wrong to pick on microsoft apple nintendo sony are just as guilty

how can a locked out system be compatible with free market laws ?

[tom66]

how is it fair that microsoft holds a monopoly over who can or can not write software for the xbox

It's a subsidy. You want such a powerful console for under $200? They make a loss on the console and make it up on the games.

[LEECH666]

Guess you're right about the shader exploit etc. I never used that hack, so I couldn't remember all that well.

Florian

[amyk]

http://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=2459

[Sionyn]

bunnie got in a whole heap () of trouble when he tapped the xbox ram buses
also a subsidy does not supersede uk law

also if any company get the police to kick your door in without having their claims tested  or enforced by a person with no education in this matter
this open to rampant abuse

take the rockbox project it has bypass copy protection on digital audio devices to run their firmware

[Tepe]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b01jv96k/Fake_Britain_Series_3_Episode_11/

Actually an excellent example of this rights circus:

[nitro2k01]

I can't watch the video ("not available in your area"). Is this just some random guy who modded his drive firmware, or is this one of the people who involved in the scene, helping with the development of exploits or so? Perhaps even the "anonymous hacker" that first presented the KK exploit on a DEFCON a few years back?

If random guy, then the thing is this. The KK hack only works on certain older kernel versions, and consequently only on old hardware that supports said kernels. The KK hack is pretty useless in that regard, especially now that there are two other hacks (SMC, reset glitch) which are more universal in terms of hardware and kernel support.

If you reflash a drive firmware today, it's highly likely you're going to use it for piracy, since that's all a reflashed drive firmware is good for these days. Even with a new drive firmware, the kernel running on the CPU will check the cryptographic signature of any data before a memory segment may be marked executable. At this point the memory becomes read-only. The XBox360 has a strict policy that any given memory segment may not be writeable and executable at the same, which makes it difficult o exploit.

The KK hack (which again only worked during a very small window of time) used a number of lucky circumstances, first that shader data in this game was not cryptographically signed, which allowed arbitrary memory to be written. And secondly a bug in a hypervisor call, which allowed the whole security system to be disabled, once you had your own code running.

Now, I don't think flashing your drive firmware warrants police action, but let's be honest and call a spade, a spade regarding piracy.

[Sionyn]

piracy is pillaging ships on the high seas........

[T4P]

I flashed a off-the-shelf drive last year for my 360 ... Bloody hell the 250GB HDD add-on from uSoft was asking 100$! No way man! i got my 500GB for only 80$ (and then flashed it with a 320GB partition)

[LEECH666]

piracy is pillaging ships on the high seas........