Bunnie Huang's seminal book "Hacking the Xbox" is now a free PDF, released thus by the author in honor of Aaron Swartz. "Hacking the Xbox" is the "Our Bodies, Our Selves" of reverse engineering -- a brilliant and accessible text setting out the case for and the practicalities of reverse engineering and taking control of your devices.
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Your problem with customer support of hardware (different hardware than we are talking about at that) from the company has absolutely nothing to do with defeating security which allows developers to get paid. I said nothing about right or wrong - just that this sort of thing directly affected my livelihood and that of a lot of other people. If you have a problem with Microsoft, I am very sorry, but it has no relevance to the discussion.
As far as reverse engineering is concerned hurting the industry.
Industry is the biggest offender.
A very large multinational company I was associated with introduced me to their "room".
Pretty much every latest model of every device similar to there own was dissected on one of 20 or 30 benches that included such modern things as integrated circuit microtomes for removing the cases and very sophisticated microprobe systems with built in microscopes and vernier micro stages for analyzing the chips and doing on chip circuit tracing.
So Scott, Im sorry but give me a break you are defending the very ones who are unrelenting in breaking every last bit (literally) of "defense" while condemning the people who might actually do something interesting and useful.
And standing up for Microsoft who sold tens of thousands of defective XBox 360s and then tried very hard to keep from repairing them, relenting only in the face of a massive class action suit, is utter nonsense.
I know I had the magic ring of death and because I Opened my own XBox to provide supplemental cooling before they decided to trepair them, Microsoft denied my claim, because I had opened it.
Screw Microsoft.
Reverse engineering is rampant in the world, it has been that way since the dawn of time. I remember when I was preparing for the Launch of Windows XP - I go to Singapore and Kuala Lumpur every year since 1999 up to current, I went to the black market one night with my friend ;) yes they exist everywhere. Anyways, I was looking over all the goods and believe me they had everything, not unlike when I am in New York in the city and the street vendors sells just about anything you want. So I was looking through the stuff, and there was a RTM(release to manufacturing) version of Windows XP right there, now as a Windows XP team member at the time I was like.....hmmmm....how is that possible, we did not ship the gold code yet to OEMs???? Well needless to say, the hackers got a hold of it months ahead of RTM while we had it in lockdown in our internal network. So the hackers got our code - cracked the activation of the RTM build so it did not need activation EVER, burned it and released it before we did (i.e. Microsoft). This is the norm in our world, yes it affects our livelihoods - but there is not much you can do to stop it. As my father once said, where there is a will - there is a way. How much does this cost OS manufacturers per release, well I happen to have done that analysis for Windows XP launch just for the Asia Pacific realm and Russia it cost Microsoft over 30million a year in lost revenue, so it is a large chunk of change. The hackers, crackers, reverse engineering types will always find a way. Remember this was back in 2001 too, as I released more OS's over the years it was still the case every time I went to the black-market there was my OS ahead of launch..... ;) Funny too, in KL and Singapore when the cops come the vendors pack up everything and run their carts away, it is the funniest thing I have ever seen!
Also do not forget USA does a lot of reverse engineering as well, many advanced technologies we see here in the DoD side as well as Public Sector come from abroad via reverse engineering from our competition. It is a two way street for sure! It is not always the case that they are copying American Invention, sometimes it is the opposite we are copying them!
Not that many years ago, what is now considered "hacking" was just using a computer/device..
That's an interesting comment Scott. Since I'm not too familiar with this industry, how does this exploration affect your livelihood?
As a member of the Xbox launch team, I have to tell you that I, personally, was not too thrilled by Mr. Huang's work - though I was very impressed by his skills. Funny how hacking is less appealing if your livelihood is directly affected by the results.
Wow, bunni went midevial on that Xbox. It's a good read, even if a lot is over my head.
Excellent post Thomas, Thank You.
I greatly fear that our lust for power and success at any cost has left the people of the World entirely at the mercy of those who profit by controlling it.
Worse, that they have no long term game plan at all and are rushing us all to doom like a herd of buffalo to the cliff.
Awesome read, thanks for posting TCIII!
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