How the Xbox 360 DVD Security was Defeated | MVG 

Commodore4Eva: *releases a new firmware for the disc drive* Microsoft: Ah shit, here we go again.

I love how the more security these companies try to layer on, the more hackers will be determined to break it all.

I remember finding a guy on Craigslist who modded 360s. I went to his shady apartment with my 360 in tow and he modded it for me. I noticed he was downloading multiple different games at multiple gbps. This was in 2007. The dude claimed he had a modded router or something. Shit was crazy. Good times

Commodore4Eva, this guy is a legend. I cant even begin to think, a single person fought and won against a whole corporation single handedly

Did you know that when Microsoft released the update for ap25 (unique console disc checks) it actually didn't work on the original hitatchi dvd drives since their firmware size was too small to add the feature. Anyone with an hitatchi from that point on had a permanent dvd drive mod. Also after a point Microsoft tried to make ap25 checks so advanced and complicated that actually legit consoles with old drives and lasers would fail the tests and get flagged for ban. Microsoft actually banned a ton of legit consoles, and then later undid these bands as well as gave these users free xbox live. From that point on Microsoft stopped banning users for the ap25 check failure flags and ultimately screwed themselves over in the cat and mouse game

Commodore4Eva is a mad lad, wonder why Microsoft didn't hire him if he was so good at cracking security flaws

I think "mistakes were made" is my favorite thumbnail quote ever

Commodore4eva was a legend

I remember C4eva. That dude was ghost.

I remember following Commodore3Eva's releases. I was refreshing his website multiple times every day hoping for updates sometimes. Never got hit by a ban. Dude is a god.

You make incredibly high quality videos. You do excellent research and I see your effort and passion in every release. You are an example of an excellent RU-vidr and creators like you are the backbone of this platform. I hope every day you are proud of yourself and feel accomplished.

I love these "how the security was defeated" videos. Really nice insight into the minds of both teams in the cat and mouse battle of trying to keep the console clean from hacks

Microsoft: *makes supposedly unhackable console* Commodore4Eva: "I'm about to end this man's whole career."

these modders are geniuses... really... i have deep respect for their skills and tenacity.

Microsoft: We will bring the whole team together and tap into our massive resources supported by our billion dollar company! Guy in basement: *Sips mountain dew*

They should have publicly offered the guy a senior dev job to help them prevent hacking lol

Other YT Gaming Channels: E3 Coverage! OMG Keanu Reeves! MVG: So here's how Xbox 360 Security was defeated.

I have no idea what you just talked about, but I watched the whole video

I like the company's claim: "it will be unhackable!" - some dude breaks it in 4 months or so ;-)

I'm more excited for the jtag exploits tbh... All of these videos are amazing!... Thanks for doing these!!!

i remember those banwaves... Man, the forums were exploding back when it all happened. I was banned twice lmao, and then decided to stick to the official fw for online play, good memories. And also, great vid as always!

The best security they implemented was the Red Ring of Death

Who would've thought that Microsoft was mad at a guy who sat at home hacking their entire system, month by month, year by year... Them losing to that is kinda sad... Commodore4Eva is a bloody legend and a force to be reckoned with.

The best part of this series is how you show the original forum posts, etc.

Hackers: enable backup copies Microsoft: well technically they didn't break the hypervisor so it's not really a success

I remember waiting and waiting for the iXtreme 2.0 firmware. The day it dropped was like Xmas.

I wonder what the expense "anti-piracy" efforts is in relation to "lost sales". I really can't imagine the former offsetting the latter in any feasible manner.

I just wanted to say, although my comment will sure fade into the other amazing comments but your channel is Awesome and the content is pure perfection! Many thanks been watching lots of your videos!

I remember all this and talking to C4Eva and Iriez when it was going on, asking technical questions.

Can remember the days of flashing LT2.0. I had a Benq drive. Was one of the easiest to crack. Near enough plug and play! The good old days

So Xbox E3 was earlier today... MVG, you must released the video now on purpose XD

Damn this video bought back so many memories. I was in college and used to buy faulty Xbox 360s fix and mod them and sell them on eBay. Good times ☺️

Love these vids man! Keep it up!

Commodore4Eva: Please do not enhance the DVD security anymore. We are good people. Microsoft: *NO!*

Looking forward to Part 2. The CPU timing attack on the 360 is very interesting!

Damn this Commodore dude was a legend. I don't endorse what he does, but I gotta hand it to him, each and everything Microsoft did, he defeated. Now that's persistence and hard work at it's finest. I really wonder what kind of skills this guy had to defeat a multibillion dollar corporation.

lol my favorite were the usb mods. i was doing them at 10 they were so easy. granted they only worked on single player and rarely worked online, but it was still cool

I love how years later I see this quote, about it being able to play "illegally" copied games, and the majority of the reason for DVD firmware hacking was to be able to play our own backups, because the xbox 360 games disks were known to be junk, and the drives were notorious for wrecking disks. The dvd firmware hack did eventually make it to market when someone else figured it out, and it was not to hard to implement, and the console could never be aware.

MVG I just wanna thank you man. You always put out quality videos and maintain the viewer interest extraordinarily. Keep up the incredible work. I know it's gotta be time consuming. I've been watching your channel for a long time now and I'm always happy to see a new upload pop up!

Here's my experience with 360 flashing when I used to do it back in the day. These apply for the original models: - The Lite-On drives were the biggest pain to flash because you needed a special tool to extract the key (The CK3 Probe to be exact). I've never flashed a Slim or an E-model drive, but apparently those require RGH. - The Hitachi 46/47s were really easy, and so were the 78/79s but you needed a special disc to be able to extract the key from a 79. And it took the longest for the AP2.5/XGD3-compatible LT+ 3.0 firmware to be released for the 79. - Ben-Qs and Samsungs were the easiest of all. Just needed to turn off and turn back on the drive at the right time and you're in Vendor Mode, and you've got your drive key. - It's perfectly possible to use different model drives by spoofing, but there's something you do have to consider. If the Xbox 360 originally had a Samsung or a Hitachi drive below 78, then you can use any of those drives. This is because they were not AP2.5 capable. However, if your Xbox 360 has a BenQ, newer Hitachi or a Lite-ON drive, then you must use either one of these because they support the AP2.5 technology. Otherwise, they will not boot XGD3 games.

Really interesting vid. I never tried any X360 hacks, as I never owned one long enough before it would RROD. lol

This is the quality content that I've subscribed to. P.S. Maybe one day you can talk about Denuvo and their alleged "unbreakable" DRM.

Microsoft: There it's perfect now Commodore4Eva: Who's gonna tell them?

+Modern Vintage Gamer Really nice video! One thing I missed was more detail on the AP2.5 crack. Filling it in here for anybody interested. IIRC (it's been some time) due to the AP2.5 checks being per-console, the previous approach of having the Drive reply with a static response to a challenge from the console was no longer possible (but still done in addition to the AP2.5 checks). C4Eva defeated this by effectively letting the drive create the challenge-response on its own. This required so called Topology information to be included in the dumped game (producible via also updated 0800 firmware and only extractible on LiteOn drives IIRC). That TP is then used by the iXtreme LT firmware to calculate the appropriate response. Also noteworthy: Hitachi, Samsung and Benq drives did not support the Check, so if your Console was originally shipped with one, you did not need to care about AP2.5.

my god that halo edition 360 how i miss those colors and that shiny orangey tray

Hi, I'm an amateur-ish ethical hacker, and I'll have to say that your knowledge about this is respectable. When I hear "challenge and response", I'm impressed. Really impressed. Considering the fact that this is not an infosec channel, your efforts on fact checking is formidable. Keep up the great work!

Microsoft: NOOOOOO YOU CANT JUST RELEASE A MODIFIED VERSION OF OUR DRIVE FIRMWARE NOOO YOU ARE ENABLING PIRACY DEVS ARE LOSING MONEY Commodore4Eva: haha backups go brrr

Looking forward to the part 2 on Xell and JTAG. Those were the days. I love these videos, so much nostalgic hacking.

To quote the film Under Siege: "Why didn't you hire this person? I don't know what his price would have been, but it would have been WORTH it."

This video makes me very nostalgic. Thank you very much for making it. I think the subject of console hacking deserves its own series or documentary.

Between you and the Game Historian, I really enjoy watching your content... Subscribed

I am not much of a gamer, but I love these video's on defeating the security.

Damn I love these videos, I was in the PlayStation camp since the PS1 but I love looking at how other consoles were defeated and compromised 🤘

I remember making a JTAG in the early mw2 days. Made it out of a Xenon MOBO console. I actually still have it and it still works. Which is incredible for being a xenon lol.

Love your Vids on Copy Protection and Security Exploits!

MVG, your synth tracks are insane! While documenting exploits on game consoles is cool, its the synths the keep me coming back for more. And then I found your bandcamp. Oh holy Jesus. What a treasure. I'm rocking out to Pacific Drive. You need to make a video on these synth tracks.

The xbox 360 is my favorite console, can't wait for part 2!

Really enjoying the series man!! I can't wait for part 2 getting into the JTAG, which was the beginning of my modding days! As you noted in your 360 homebrew vid, this era of homebrew was by far the most booming part of homebrew history. I also got pretty deep into the call of duty modding scene until I got sued by Activision... When Black Ops launched, my team was the only team who could take a modded xbox on xbox live... There was a huge market for 10th prestige lobbies on the release of the game and we were the only ones who could offer the service. It took them 2 weeks to send a PI to all of our doors... That was the end of that! One of my friends didn't stop and ended up in prison, another ended up dead... No joke!

Please label this as PART 1 - I was upset that it ended in a cliffhanger :-(

Everytime I see a video like this, It makes me want to bust out my old RGH and start playing like the olden days.

I love this series, keep them videos coming.

TheSpecialist, Comodore4Eva and TMBINC, names I will never forget

Thanks for the regular uploads, these are fascinating and really give great insight.

Good job on covering the iXtreme firmwares and mod chips. Part 2 is going to cover the famous JTAG/RGH (reset glitch hack) it seems.

C4eva is the reason i'm a programmer.

I remembered going to many shops looking for specific models of Liteon drive and many shop owners was puzzled and thought I was crazy.

“There’s security in this box that the hacker community hasn’t seen before.” Hacker Community: “Hold My Beer”

i love the amount of technical information in these videos.

Love this series, great job as always with these. Cheers for the upcoming part 2!

This video takes me back. I remember the Hitachi drives being really sensitive to bricking, I remember using programs like Jungle Flasher and ABGX and I remember the point the games would throw up errors about games being unable to fit on discs and Imgburn asking to truncate discs. I love this video...a great trip down memory lane.

Man, I remember all the time and hassle I spent making pirated games back in the day, hiring games from Video Ezy copying them and ending up with a massive library Now it's a lot harder, I'm *WAAAAY* too lazy to be bothered, too old (and therefore more frugal) and quite happy to wait a year or two for a game I want to come down to a more reasonable price Still, for all the hassles I had while sailing the the high seas, they were still good memories

Your videos are amazing dude. Very underrated channel.

Microsoft: Our new Xbox is unhackable! Hackers: *observe*

This channel is a history database, i love it

Awh the good ol' days, broke my 360 CD drive hot swapping my modded Gta4 Disc😄

the only channel on youtube I never click skip on the adverts on.

I absolutely love these hardware security videos. I can't wait for more!

You made the comment "we will cover this in part 2". Now I'm checking back every day for the other half lol

I hear The Prodigy in the background. Nice video mate

Just seeing that Halo 3 disc brings the nostalgia back. Damn, I wish I could go back to the days when I’d come back from school and hop on to a big team battle match with the buds.

Got to admire those hackers. They're absolutely brilliant and always beat the engineers at these companies sooner or later.

Man, those ban waves were the first time I had ever seen a company retaliate on people at scale

The last revision of the CFW was known as the silver bullet and I think Microsoft actually screwed up with a firmware update on the drives which led C4Eva to create a firmware that didnt need ap2.5 replay sectors specific to each game anymore. That's how I remember it anyway I could be wrong. Great video as always.

"Mistakes were made". That statement defines the entire console.

Great videos, great research. Truly quality history telling of stuff that could easily be lost in shut down forum websites 10 years down the track.

microsoft: there are going to be levels of security in these boxes that hackers have never seen before hackers: CHALLENGE ACCEPTED😏

Can't wait for the next part!! I really love your series on how the different consoles were hacked. You really do your research - it shows and it makes the videos that much more useful and interesting to watch. Thanks for making these!

I'm far from a tech genius but I love your content buddy

One of one of my favorites episodes so far! Never had a 360, but I love the way you explain complex topics in your videos. :)

I totally LOVE these security defeatted vide game series! i hope u can cover everything for la of them eventually! How did Galoob do it defeat the 10nes chip on nes? How did the vairous game genies/etc manage to do it! How did action replay defeat region lock and add cheats on Saturn! What about how was Pseudoasaturn conceived and inven ted? How did Super Noah's Ark 3d do it? How does Genesis Game genie defeat region lock on region locked versions of genesis? And any of the rest u can thnk of!

Yet another very interesting, extremely well told story. It's fascinating how those stories unfold. Can't wait until another "mistakes were made" thumbnail appears ! :)

Maybe Microsoft should have spent all that time and money in making a console that doesn't red ring every 3 months instead of the Hypervisor that was defeated anyway.

I swear I'm gonna freak! I for some reason haven't subbed to you yet and I've been watching your content for almost a year. I could've sworn I had already. Every video you make is top tier quality and I have now subbed and hit that bell icon. Keep up the good work man!

I can't wait to see the next video about the JTAG/RGH. I ran a business from home for a couple years where I provided services such as console modifications. There is a stigma that everyone who mod their consoles do this to cheat or to run illegal game copies, but that was never my experience with people. Most of the people who came to me were older than me, usually in their 30s and 40s and really just wanted to use their Xbox as an emulation, homebrew and media center machine. I did meet some people that were obviously only looking to pirate games and even asked me to load their device with a ton of games and DLC (which I absolutely refused, and asked them to take their business elsewhere). But those were few and far apart. Good video, MVG! Your content is always top notch and very interesting. I hope that one day we'll see a video titled "How the Xbox One Security was Defeated". :) Have a good week. Until next time.

C4EVA is an absolute legend, i was part of this scene from the beginning to the end and never bricked a single drive even when doing the kamikazi hack which involved drilling through the chip on the drive to enable firmware dumps and writes, yep he definitely was a GOD in the xbox360 hacking scene and Microsoft was defeated in the end with c4's LT 3 firmware! I wish he would rise again and defeat the Xbox one!

So many memories.... I remember constantly refreshing the thread as Commodore4Eva, TheSpecialist,etc were discussing how practical attacking the dvd drive was. I miss the xboxhacker forum :-(

Damn, this was really really informative. I had no idea the 360 had been hacked in this method. Can't wait for part 2.

I Xbox 360 is still my favorite console console to hardware mod (PS2 is close second as I enjoy a challenge) as there's so much variety in what you can do and from console to console, so I'm extremely exited for part two.

Microsoft: makes "unhackable" console. Commodore4Eva: Hold my beer.

It's well known that developers of hardware security understand how they will be cracked. That's why there are so many levels of security. They usually have estimated timelines of how long each will take to be hacked, how long it will take for the hack to propagate, the length of time they will allow them to go unfixed before they patch it or pull out another layer of security. One company even hired people to hack their own security to test how long it would take, unfortunately for them this guy then went on to get downsized when the company was bought and was the main source of all security hacks for their hardware. Eventually they busted him, but not after years of losses. Awesome video.