Hack-proof DVD drive for Xbox 360 arrives

FOR SOME TIME NOW naughty owners of the Xbox 360 have been able to flash the system's DVD-drive firmware with manipulated code that allowed the successful loading of copied 360 games.

For nearly every drive type and drive firmware Microsoft used in the new Xbox, hackers have been able to defeat the security mechanisms and patch the drives to allow for 'backup' disks to be used. A with the manufacturing of the original Xbox, Microsoft sources several different drives from different manufacturers (including Toshiba/Samsung and Hitachi/LG), but this hasn't stopped the availability of firmware hacks for nearly every drive (although the Philips model still seems to be a fairly safe).

A plethora of professionally-made (and marketed) accessories to ease the hacking of the console has also been made available for sometime.

Now hackers and system owners are reporting of a new drive, sourced from Hitachi with the model number GDR-3120L and v0078FK version tag, that makes it much harder for the console to be hacked.

Owners on the forums of the infamous Xbox hacking site ' Xbox-Scene' are noting various changes and problems:

• Black hard glue/resin has been added covering all the chip pins and the controller pins - picture here
• Removing the flash chip to externally be read will destroy the drive due to the new black resin
• Wiring in a patching-on-the-fly mod would be very hard, again due to the resin
• The firmware dump program used for all the other drives, 'memdump', no longer works, so a totally new program re-write is needed to dump the firmware for inspection/hacking
• Chip type has been changed to a 39VF020, so new flashing (previously 'flashsec') program needed
• External debug triggering into 'ModeB' has been removed which is used for re-writing the firmware

Originally, it seems these drives were appearing in Australasian territories, but others have spotted the same drive model and version in the UK - so expect them worldwide very soon.

Although constant rumours are rife about an Xbox 360 mod chip having been completed and in production, nothing is yet available that uses anything other than the DVD-drive firmware rewrite. There is, of course, a possibility that the glue/resin can be successfully removed, and the firmware tampered with again, but this will require some feat to be repeated successfully every time.

For now the DVD firmware hack problem seems to have been largely solved by Microsoft, and it will be interesting to see how long the console can live on without further penetration. µ

See also
Xbox 360 to have internal HD drive
Playstation shenanigans outed, dissected
Wii pre-orders are go
Microsoft working on a portable XBox