XBox hardware security reveiled.

Andrew Shane Huang, nicknamed "bunnie" and PhD-student at MIT, has written a whitepaper on the security holes in the Microsoft XBox's hardware. The paper starts with this abstract:

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This paper discusses the hardware foundations of the cryptosystem employed by the Xbox(TM) video game console from Microsoft. A secret boot block overlay is buried within a system ASIC. This secret boot block decrypts and verifies portions of an external FLASH-type ROM. The presence of the secret boot block is camouflaged by a decoy boot block in the external ROM. The code contained within the secret boot block is transferred to the CPU in the clear over a set of high-speed busses where it can be extracted using simple custom hardware. The paper concludes with recommendations for improving the Xbox security system. One lesson of this study is that the use of a high-performance bus alone is not a sufficient security measure, given the advent of inexpensive, fast rapid prototyping services and high-performance FPGAs.

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Related links:
bunnies burrow, the author's homepage.
page dedicated to the XBox at bunnies burrow.
Slashdot article and forum on the whitepaper.
PDF version of Whitepaper (http)
PDF version of Whitepaper (ftp)

Security by obscurity. Is this what M$ thinks is proper security? Arghh!

Good thing I'm going for the PS2.

Nice find by the way....:thumbsup:

Heh.. I just found that article too.. LOL... Leave it to M$ to drop the ball once again.

/me points to his sig for furthur proof..

Nice data, Guus...I am particularly interested since the X-Box is the only console game system(since 1986, that is...and yes, I even own the TurboGrafx16 and that awful Genesis add-on, the 'SegaCD') that I don't own (in expectation of something like this...the anti-M$ crowd is truly amazing when they get a bone to chew on. :) ). Although, I'm sure that most folks don't analyze the GC and PS2 like this...but who knows, there are many people in the world that just plain LIKE taking things apart to find out how they work. I could be included, but the last thing that I really disassembled and analyzed was my parents' old PB100. Not much there, sad to say...:(

Anyway...thanks for the links...I'll be saving these.

Ouroboros

P.S. And as long as I'm thinking about it...InterAct Software is a master at infiltrating and modifying the software components of many systems, hence the GameShark, etc, etc. But, in my experience, they are not worth it. My PS2 had to be replaced, because the GameShark software modified the system drivers, and then CORRUPTED them, in relation to the DVD-ROM drivers...hence rendering my PS2 nearly useless. I haven't yet seen them for the X-Box or GameCube, but my advice is to stay away from them when you are playing on a 'next-gen' system. You don't need to win that badly that it costs you hundreds of dollars to replace your system when their...I hesitate to use the word...MALICIOUS software corrupts your machine.

O

Uhm, XBOX plays games, who cares who can hack into it? as long as you press a button and the gun fires, isn't that what XBOX is for? Is this site that ANTI microsoft? I mean I know windows isn't as this or that as unix/linux but I'm sorry Bill Gates genius is what made him the billionaire he is today... regardless of who likes who, Bill made sure Microsoft products sold, and that's why they dominate the market regardless of what unix/linux users like to think...

Just my opinion

-xposed

Um, the Xbox is goin to be able to go online. This in itself is not a bad thing, but if you think that you're going to be safe in some type of M$ bubble then you are truly fooling yourself.

Security is always a concern. Try not to be too naive, xposed...

How proud could a person be, after this scenario happens...

"One day, I was happily surfing the net with my Xbox to look up some quick codes until all of a sudden a message popped up saying: "\x/0\x/, 1m 1n 4 xb0x! 54y 83y 83y!" and then the Xbox stopped working...."

At the moment, there might not be any written programs to attack an Xbox, but wait, the more that surf, the more at risk!

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Uhm, XBOX plays games, who cares who can hack into it?

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You could say the same about your computer...

"Uhm, my PC plays games, prints documents, downloads music, who cares who can hack into it?"

Well......

I suggest that you obtain documents like "Why Hack?" to further understand why we're so cautious

xposed, This site isn't anti-microsoft. Its just that M$ tends to make fools of themselves to people who really know whats going on. The only reason M$ is a big as it is, is because it brings computers into everybodies homes wether they are computer literate or not. This is a good thing, right? Well in M$'s efforts to make the OS user friendly they sacrificed security, plain and simple.

This is just another example of how microsoft has again dropped the ball when it comes to security. Wether it is an xbox gaming system or a government facility, the security is always a factor. The xbox gaming system has its seriel numbers in the software, if somebody got the seriel number they could then get all your info from the companies databases. Next thing you know that psychopath that you destroyed playing online shows up to your door.

security through obscurity never works.

oh no.. someone's hacked into my xbox...
hehe.. well not yet..
but from what i see.. this security issue that "bunnie" found probably won't apply
to malicious code getting into your box.. wiping out the hd or rom,bios whatever.
i believe it applies more to reverse engineering.

good lord, M$ just made it easier for someone to reverse engineer their product with lame security, and will sue anyone who attempts to earn enough dough to pay for their horribly overpriced software..........Bill Gates loves court appearances, I guess :)

I found some more articles relating this hack - the CNET.com article in particular (linked below) is a nice read.

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Taken from the CNET.com article
Microsoft said the incident posed no threat to its customers or partners. "We completely support pursuits worthy of both Ph.D. candidacy and academic publication," the company said in a statement. "And while reverse engineering of game consoles is not a new phenomenon, neither is the fact that we will vigorously prosecute to the fullest extent of the law anyone who tries to modify their system for the purpose of violating our partners' intellectual property or that of Microsoft's."

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Hehe, so, basicly he's saying he's proud that it took a PhD candidate to crack the system :)

New, related links (since I can't edit the first post anymore...time restriction and all):
CNET.com article
Security.nl article and forum (in Dutch)

For a games console, this level of security is pretty good (better than the PS2). The only reason MS have bothered to do this is to try and stop pirating of the CDs used to play the games themselves.
However, the problem that MS have is that the basic hardware for the Xbox is sold at a significant loss, so it makes sense to reverse engineer the software/hardware if you can. This means that you end up with a very cheap PC which can run *nix, Windows, whatever.