Hacking The Xbox 360 For Dummies
Introduction
The Xbox 360 DVD-ROM drive firmware hack is currently the
only modification or hack available for the Xbox 360. The firmware
hack allows you to play properly created backups of Xbox 360
games. The firmware hack does NOT allow homebrew programs to
run and does NOT bypass region protection. If a video game is
locked to a particular region, then it will only play on an Xbox 360 of
that same region. Before jumping into this modification, it is a good
idea to learn how this hack works.
In the most basic form, an Xbox 360’s game protection comes from
two security measures. First of which is encryption. Nearly all files
on an Xbox 360 game disc as well as the Xbox 360 hard drive are
signed with Microsoft’s private key. If anything, even just a single bit,
is changed, the signature is broken and the Xbox 360 refuses to run
the file. The second security measure is media locking. The game is
restricted to run only from a certain type of media. For example, all
Xbox 360 games are restricted to run only from “Xbox 360†media.
Game demos downloaded from Xbox Live are restricted to run only
from “Xbox 360 Hard Drive.†Xbox Live Arcade games aren’t
restricted at all; they can run from any media. Before the firmware
hacks, if you were to copy an Xbox 360 game and try running it from
“DVD+R DLâ€, the Xbox 360 would obviously see that it wasn’t “Xbox
360†media and refuse to run it because of the media restriction.
This media restriction is what the firmware hack bypasses. The
firmware fakes out the Xbox 360 into thinking that any media is “Xbox
360†media. You copy your game to DVD+R DL, insert it into a
firmware-hacked drive, and instead of returning “DVD+R DL†to the
Xbox 360, the drive says it is an “Xbox 360†disc and it then plays the
game. As you can see, the firmware hack does not bypass any
signature protection whatsoever. Some Xbox 360 games use region
protection to restrict the playing of a game in a certain region. The
firmware hack will not allow you to play games out of a region if they
are region-locked. If the original will play in your Xbox 360, the same
backup will. If the original won’t, neither will the backup of it.