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Programming IT Technology

Lindows CEO Funds XBox Hacking Contest 269

Posted by CmdrTaco from the stuff-to-do dept.
Kai writes "PCWorld.com recently posted an article on how Lindows CEO Michael Robertson is funding the 'Linux on XBox Hacking Challenge'. He was previously annonymous donor who donated $200,000 to the project. His donation will be split in to two prizes, one to who completes part A of the challenge, and the other to the who completes part B. Part A, running Linux on the XBox, has already been completed, but Part B, running Linux on XBox with no hardware modifications has yet to be completed. Part A of the challenge can be downloaded from Sourceforge." Without a bios change, it seems like part B might be a bit tricky. T. adds: Tricky, but not hopeless. Eric C. writes "The Neo Project recently updated its client so users can use free processor cycles to try and crack the private key that Microsoft uses to sign Xbox software."
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Lindows CEO Funds XBox Hacking Contest More

Lindows CEO Funds XBox Hacking Contest

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  • Oh that's swell.. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonvmous Coward ( 589068 ) on Sunday January 05, 2003 @08:24AM (#5019098)
    The guy funding the Linux XBOX project is a direct competitor of MS. Kinda cheapens the whole thing, duddn't it? At least that's how I felt.

    I mean, if it works it works. But his motivations place him at MS's level.
    • "The guy funding the Linux XBOX project is a direct competitor of MS"

      What I'd like to know is why he's putting up 200k as a reward instead of just funding some people on his own. He could hire 4 engineers for a year to do that. Heh maybe he's sick of litigation.
    • I don't think it's cheap at all. Consider it this way: he's paying to open the hardware platform up for software platform competition. The stereotypical Evil Company would keep the ability to run 3rd party software on the box to themselves; he's willing to let the world have it.
    • He has said in interviews recently that he doesn't care which version of Linux is used to achive the goal. It just has to be repeatable. The idea is to prevent Microsoft from jumping ship from the PC to a closed MS hardware platform for PCs which would truely exclude other OSs from the marketplace.

      • FWIW, here is his direct quote: (Score:5, Informative)

        by gmezero ( 4448 ) on Sunday January 05, 2003 @10:03AM (#5019356) Homepage
        http://www.forbes.com/newswire/2003/01/03/rtr83678 5.html

        "There is no business justification; that's not why I did it," Robertson told News.com of his rationale behind the contest. "I did it because I thought people should have the choice to run the software they want on the hardware of their choice."

        Robertson said that Xbox is designed much like a PC with a closed operating system run on Intel microprocessors. He argues that as it has done with PCs, Microsoft is trying to make its software the defacto operating system in gaming consoles.

        "I think Xbox sets a dangerous precedent," he told CNET News.com.
    • That's the thing about Microsoft getting into the hardware market though - now EVERYONE is a competitor with Microsoft.

      Someone pointed out to me yesterday that Sony's attempted buyout of Intertrust and its patent lawsuits were really just an attempt to get Microsoft to stay in the software yard and stay out of the hardware business.

      This is very similar- Lindows just wants a fair chance to compete on commodity hardware- instead of having to fight monopoly rents on proprietary hardware. To sink to M$'s level he'd have to first establish a monopoly then start sinking his warchest into strongarming the hardware market first through consoles (phase 1) then eventually through a ubiquitous computing strategy (phase 2), resulting in phase 3 (profit)(world domination)(benevolent dictatorship)(pick any two).

      Nothing cheap about it at all. Thank you Mr. Robertson. You may not know how to keep Walmart shoppers from being root all the time, but I'm 'root'ing for you :P
    • The guy funding the Linux XBOX project is a direct competitor of MS. Kinda cheapens the whole thing, duddn't it?

      Who else do you think would sponsor such contest? :)

      Frankly I was a bit shock to know that the man behind is not Larry Ellison. :)
    • The guy funding the Linux XBOX project is a direct competitor of MS.

      Well, duh, I think we all sort of expected something of the sort. But he's not a competitor in the game console arena. Most earlier speculation about the mystery funding revolved around Sony.

      Kinda cheapens the whole thing, duddn't it?

      Uh, no? Rather, I would say that it makes it make perfect sense.

      But his motivations place him at MS's level.

      No, there's a big difference -- Robertson is engaging in competitive behavior. MS engages in ANTI-competitive behavior.

  • Link... (Score:5, Informative)

    by pangel83 ( 598985 ) on Sunday January 05, 2003 @08:26AM (#5019100) Homepage
    somebody correct the SF link

  • Link Problem (Score:5, Informative)

    by NightRain ( 144349 ) <rayNO@SPAMcyron.id.au> on Sunday January 05, 2003 @08:26AM (#5019101)
    lol. The article points to sourceforget.net, not sourceforge. Might want to fix that :)

  • DMCA, anyone? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by alpharoid ( 623463 ) on Sunday January 05, 2003 @08:32AM (#5019119)
    I like the project... but is this feasible? Wouldn't cracking the X-Box encryption key violate the DMCA and put a lot of people in trouble? Microsoft could afford the lawyers, you know.

    Anyways, good luck to them.

    • Re:DMCA, anyone? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by warmcat ( 3545 ) on Sunday January 05, 2003 @08:43AM (#5019158)
      Many people involved in the Xbox Linux project are not in the US, happily enough. The EUCD is late in .uk and .de.

      In any event, things are only 'illegal' when they transgress specific laws. As the DMCA and EUCD are concerned with copyright protection, I really don't see where the problem is if the key is somehow revealed and used to sign a Linux bootloader app. Where is the MS code that is being copied?

      Anyway I think the effort to find the key by throwing random numbers at it is practically impossible, however many clients you can muster. This is a 2048-bit number (256 bytes) that you need to factor correctly into two primes.

      Its much more likely that the second part of the prize will be won by a buffer overflow or other weakness in one of the games. There are a lot of games, written by people of widely varying experience and skill level. Can MS be sure that not even one of them exposes a buffer overflow weakness?

      • Re:DMCA, anyone? (Score:2, Interesting)

        by alpharoid ( 623463 )
        Anyway I think the effort to find the key by throwing random numbers at it is practically impossible, however many clients you can muster. This is a 2048-bit number (256 bytes) that you need to factor correctly into two primes.
        No question about that. It took three years for the RC5 effort to brute-force a 64-bit key!

        Now, I am not a Real Programmer, but it appears the NT kernel used in the X-Box lacks a few features, including memory protection. Wouldn't this allow any running task to peek into any part of the X-Box memory space, and change things at will?

        • Re:DMCA, anyone? (Score:4, Informative)

          by Uller-RM ( 65231 ) on Sunday January 05, 2003 @09:53AM (#5019334) Homepage
          Catch: Get a running task into the system. Your best bet to do this without modchipping would, IMO, be to emulate XBox Live or another download system for a game. You can open the box and plug the drive into a normal IDE system - but it uses the ATA protocol's password mode - meaning you either have to crack the key or hotswap the drive after powering it up in an XBox.

          Catch: Get the task running. The XBox is essentially a single-process OS due to its use of unified memory addresses for all hardware.

          Having looked at the problem for some time my suspicion for the best way to go about it would be a buffer overflow or other flaw in the saved game system, since you can put those on a memory card easily enough and copy it to the HDD. Tada, backdoor without requiring modchipping.

          In the XBox, once you've got control of the CPU, everything becomes possible. The catch is doing that, since the kernel will not allow you to load an unsigned executable. At the same time, I'm sure that MSFT has quite thoroughly checked the Dashboard XBE on the drive for exploitable bugs... ... hah.

    • Re:DMCA, anyone? (Score:3, Informative)

      by k-hell ( 458178 )
      From their FAQ [sourceforge.net]:
      Is your project illegal? Doesn't forbid the DMCA all this?


      The DMCA forbids circumventing copy protection, but this is not our goal. We develop an alternative operating system for the Xbox gaming console. A side product could be the ability to run unsigned code, but this alone does not make it possible to play pirated copies of games. Nevertheless, if you live inside the USA or another country with a similar legislation, and you work on Xbox hacking rather than on Linux developing, you can of course join the project anonymously.
      If you are either a lawyer or a Microsoft representative, you are of course welcome to talk to us about any changes.

  • Lindows taking advantage of open-source R&D? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by k-hell ( 458178 ) on Sunday January 05, 2003 @08:34AM (#5019126)
    Geoff "Dissonance" Gasior at The Tech Report [tech-report.com] has made an interesting comment [tech-report.com] regarding how Lindows could potentially take advantage of open-source "R&D".
    • The linked article in the parent suggests that this is a sneaky way to deliver an Xbox version of Lindows.

      The Xbox Linux team have done the necessary work for any distro to be made to work with the Xbox, and you can download the necessary kernel patches from sourceforge.

      But the two main distros that have been made have been Debian, by Ed Hucek, and Mandrake 9, mainly by Michael Steil and Milosch Meriac (both of these distros are available from SF). So this kind of deflates the argument that this is somehow a wheeze to help Lindows.
    • I guess it's possible, but if they did crack the XBox in this way, Microsoft would just up the rev and new boxes would be secure again.

      Also of course, the XBox makes a pretty lousy computer. It was never designed for that.

      • I don't see how "upping the rev" would achieve anything. If that key is cracked, anything can be made to appear as though it were signed by MS. If MS releases a revision of the Xbox with a different key, every old game would not work with the new Xbox, which wouldn't fly at all. So they have to still allow code signed with that key to be run, which means you can run anything if you have that key.

        And yes, the Xbox may not be the best computer, but think about what you can do with it; USB ports, built in network, TV outs, and a USB Video Capture module made by hauppage (I think) means you could get your Xbox to run as a PVR. On top of that, a website could be developed so your Xbox PVR can connect and get television schedules and programming information so your PVR isn't like a very old VCR where all you can is press 'record'.

        Now not only do you have a halfway decent gaming console, but you have a $200 TiVo with no advertising. (Well, $300 or so including the cost of the vid capture unit.) That alone is motivation enough for me to hope this offered reward brings forth a solution.

    • is to take advantage of open-source R&D. Why have open-source R&D if nobody takes advantage of it?

  • The Neo Project (Score:3, Interesting)

    by kasperd ( 592156 ) on Sunday January 05, 2003 @08:34AM (#5019127) Homepage Journal
    The Neo Project recently updated its client so users can use free processor cycles to try and crack the private key that Microsoft uses to sign Xbox software.

    Unfortunately the server apears to be slashdotted. Let's hope that just means a lot of people want to help with that task. This of course makes me want to ask about the legality of doing this. Does people risk getting sued by downloading the client?

    • Re:The Neo Project (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Artifex ( 18308 )
      Does people risk getting sued by downloading the client?


      I doubt people will get sued for downloading it. Using it is another matter, and distributing the broken key is more different.

      Personally, I draw a line between the RC contests, like distributed.net participates in, and willfully trying to break a company's security.

      Sure, you bought the hardware, but I don't see you thinking that cracking keys (or generating faked IMSIs) for your GSM phone is legitimate. And most people will admit that screwing around with key card interceptors and other stuff for their DirecTV receivers in order to get free premium channels is illegitimate. So why do you think it's ok to do it to the XBox, except that you want to screw Microsoft?

      • Re:The Neo Project (Score:2, Insightful)

        by harks ( 534599 )
        I think the difference between cracking xbox to run Linux and using descramblers to get premium channels on TV illegally is that with the latter, you are stealing a service.
      • So why do you think it's ok to do it to the XBox

        Because the purpose of doing it is to achieve interoperability between Linux and the X-Box. Had the purpose been to make pirate copies or something similar, it would have been an entirely different matter.

  • Poor neo project (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Rogerborg ( 306625 ) on Sunday January 05, 2003 @08:36AM (#5019136) Homepage
    • We do not know if it is legal or not to participate in the Xbox challenge, we are looking for some legal advice as a donation to Neo.

    Welcome to a maibox full of "IANAL, but I play one on Slashdot, and..." messages.

    Also, the site is slashdotted, but from what I can make out, it seems to be a Windows client. Ironic, nes pas? Does anyone know if it runs under wine?

    • "Ironic, nes pas?"

      Not at all. According to a Slashdot poll from a while ago, most visitors use Windows, not Linux.
      That (and the fact that pro-Windows posts often get modded up) also kills the myth that Slashdot is a pro-Linux anti-Windows site.
      • Most of what I see is Anti-WindowsBashing, basically the moderators saying: "Shut the fuck up, god kills 500 fluffy kittens every time you use a dollar-sign somewhere besides currency notation"
        • Then what are these?
          +3, Interesting [slashdot.org]
          +4, Informative [slashdot.org]
          Look pretty pro-Windows to me. And high moderated too.

          Or how about these highly moderated anti-Linux posts?
          Linux UIs suck [slashdot.org]
          Linux is too late [slashdot.org]
          XFree86 is a mess [slashdot.org]
          A long way to go [slashdot.org]
      • Well, I use both Windows and Linux on my computer, but Windows is my main operating system--I play games more than I do anything else, and games just aren't the same under Wine. Also, I didn't feel like logging out to vote twice.
      • What question are you answering? I think it's ironic relying on a Microsoft product to run a project to allow Linux to run on a Microsoft product. It wasn't a Slashdot meta commentary.
    • works great [decsystem.org], fonts look a little messed up though...
    • This wasn't a Slashdot meta comment. I don't give a snot what OS's you lot are using to view this site, I'm commenting that it's ironic that a project to run the Linux OS on a Microsoft product relies on a Microsoft OS. Not every comment on Slashdot is self referential.

  • STOP with this Neoproject bullshit! (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Troed ( 102527 ) on Sunday January 05, 2003 @08:45AM (#5019165) Homepage Journal
    The signing key used for Xbox executables is 2048 bit RSA.


    That's astronomically more than most BANKS use today .. i.e, there's no way - absolutely no way - you can brute-force the Xbox signing key. The Neoproject guys are complete morons without any knowledge about cryptography. This is the third forum in 2 days I've had to post in to put some sense into this.


    There are two places in the Xbox suspectible to a "no-modchip" attack - but with $100k being offered no real _groups_ of hackers are targetting this yet ..

    • Agreeded, but a private groups cracking effort is a nice way for someone at Microsoft to leak the key and get the cash.
      $100K must be pretty tempting.

      On the other hand, you could probably blackmail MS for more than $100K to keep the key a secret.
    • First off, I know very little about the xbox boot process - however I know the amount of data it is able to calculate a hash for signature verification is fairly limited in size. Obviously it can't read the entire CD and use that as a hash or the user would wait forever. So it seems the best approach is to use the executable image from some already signed game/app and cause that to load your payload - by replacing data it reads with something that allows you to take control. Games are not designed to handle corrupted data so this shouldn't be that hard. The ideal game candidate would do as little as possible before allowing you to take control.

      MS cannot verify signatures mid-game because the process is to slow so further reads from the CD go unchecked.

      One possibility MS could employ to thwart this is by checking the signature of a few random block of CD data at startup. Most of the time it wouldn't catch you, but that 1% would be enough to discourage people from using this method.

  • The True Intention of Mike Robertson (Score:5, Funny)

    by cioxx ( 456323 ) on Sunday January 05, 2003 @08:46AM (#5019167) Homepage
    This man is very clever. As I understand, he funded the XBox hacking project for company's gain. Still with me? Good.

    The way it works is, once the hardware is hackable without any physical modification, Lindows Company buys mass quantities of Xboxes from Wallmart for $199/unit, loads Lindows OS on it, and sells it to consumers for a new low price of $59 dollars at the same Walmart chain.

    Sure, they will take a loss of about $140 dollars, but they're counting on the royalty fees from Click'N'Game warehouse with such titles as:

    Tux Racer Ultra

    Totally Real Tournament 2003

    Beyond Tetris eXtreme

    Revamped version of Minesweeper in 3d

    ...and finally, gnuCash.

    The most important feature in the upcoming Lindows XBOX of course would be the ability of users to CHANGE THE WALLPAPER and Play Music on it (MP3). Just think of the possibilities. This revolutionary "box" will change the way people experience mediocrity.

    Insiders tell me that Lindows, headed by genious Michael Robertson, is moving full scale ahead with this new business plan, plus more. And something about Colonizing Planet Mars and training chimps to be able to write clean C#, server side code for web applications in .NET .. but that's just a rumor iirc.

  • Linux Console? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by MikeFM ( 12491 )
    For $200,000 couldn't he have done something more useful like funded the design of an opensourced Linux-based console? I mean really if they could make some deals and get some good video and maybe wireless networking intergrated into a mini-ITX motherboard and put together a Dreamcast/GameCube sized case with a dvd-rom drive and room for a hdd they'd have something sweet. Really the current crop of mini-itx motherboards/cases are already nice for affordable music/video playback and work rather well for playing games a couple years old.. a lil boost to the video and you'd have things set.

  • I find the Neo bit interesting.. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by mcc ( 14761 ) <amcclure@purdue.edu> on Sunday January 05, 2003 @08:49AM (#5019177) Homepage
    I find the part about using an RSA-style collaborative project to crack the X-box permission-to-run keys interesing, in particular becuase it's good practice-- eventually, barring a sudden backlash of informed consumerism against microsoft or some other kind of miracle, we're going to be needing to do this with the Palladium keys. I particularly wonder about a couple things:
    1. How many bits are in the x-box "trusted software" permission-to-run keys? What about in Palladium? For these N-bit keys, what is the approximate difficulty of brute-forcing it as compared to, say, brute-forcing RSA?
    2. Distributed clients like this one, as far as i am aware, just get parcelled out random blocks of the "possible key" space, and send back which numbers they checked, right? Is there any way to PROVE those numbers were, in fact, correctly checked, besides asking multiple clients to check each individual block and hoping that at least one of the clients tells the truth? Like, is there anything to prevent Microsoft from just randomly calling up the project with a bunch of dummy clients that submit the REAL x-box key a couple times to the "i've checked this and it's not the key" list? ((Well.. okay.. I can think of a way to do that.. but it would require actually USING Palladium, to ensure everyone submitting blocks to the crack-Palladium project is using an unaltered, approved, digitally-signed Palladium-cracking client. So, uh, that's right out.) I know previous distributed projects have had issues with clients lying about their results in order to boost statistics, but this is the first time i'm aware of there has been a massively distributed computational work in which there is a specific party with a vested, active interest in the project being actually sabotaged.
    3. Were the Palladium keys to be cracked, is there anything MS could do at that point? Is there any way they could just Windows Update all the Palladium installs out there to suddenly use some new backup key, and invalidate the old one? It would seem the answer is no, becuase it seems that would automatically mean all of the existing palladium software in the entire world would suddenly become "untrusted" and have to be re-compiled at the vendor with the new keys, or something, but maybe there's something i'm missing. Is there something i'm missing? And anyway, aren't the palladium keys going to be stored in hardware, in some special Intel chip? Or something? How is a Palladium app marked as "Trusted By The MS Signing Authority", exactly, anyway? I haven't been following this as closely as i should have been.
    I'm confused and ignorant. Please explain things to me.
    • Let me try to answer some of your questions. I might be wrong.. but lets see.

      The reason why this key needs to be cracked instead of found on some chip in the xbox is...

      There are two keys. Public and private.

      The Private key is used to sign or encrypt something. And this key is kept somewhere with MS.

      The Public key on the otherhand would be in the xbox. This key is use to checked that the correct private key would have been used to sign the software.

      The public and private keys are related by some math fuction that's suppose to tbe one way. So with the private key you can generate the public key. But with the public key you can't easily tell what the private key was. This has to do with the difficulty of factoring prime numbers.

      So to find the private key what you can do is use a random guess of the private key to sign a piece of data like "hello world" then check with the public key to see if the signature is correct.

      This guess and check method is quite time consuming as you can imagine. There are other ways but I am haven't learn about those yet.

      hope this answers your questiosn.
    • we're going to be needing to do this with the Palladium keys.

      It suddenly stroke me... is Xbox security a playground for upcoming Palladium?
    • The way that i believe distributed.net detect people who dont check and just send the block back is to hand out false positives. (i'm actually not sure they do this but it was discussed)

      That way the server can tell if a user has been cheating when they report that a false positive didn't contain the key.

    • "Like, is there anything to prevent Microsoft from just randomly calling up the project with a bunch of dummy clients that submit the REAL x-box key a couple times to the "i've checked this and it's not the key" list?"

      It's a 2048-bit RSA key. The amount of time taken to crack this will almost certainly be longer than the 5 year life of the X-box. Microsoft would have to be moronically stupid to risk sending the real key to cracking people in an effort to derail the system.

  • A triumph for Linux! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anand_S ( 638598 ) on Sunday January 05, 2003 @09:01AM (#5019206)
    Mr. Robertson's project is indeed important, but am I the only one having trouble using vi with a gamepad?

  • Keys already found? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Raptor88 ( 537294 )
    The article states: "Also, last June a Massachusetts Institute of Technology student claimed to crack the Xbox's security system, potentially allowing users to run any software on the system." Following the link... "Using a custom circuit board, made in spare time in a three-week period for a total cost of about $50, Massachusetts Institute of Technology student Andrew Huang was able to tap traffic between Xbox components and uncover the keys that unlock the device's protection," So does that mean the security keys have already been found? Why can't someone working for the NeoProject do the same thing that this guy did? It seems it would be more feasible to rebuild something that has worked in the past than it would be to try and brute force the key.

    • Re:Keys already found? (Score:5, Informative)

      by warmcat ( 3545 ) on Sunday January 05, 2003 @09:24AM (#5019269)
      The key that Bunnie found was an RC4 key that was stored in ROM. He snooped it being read by the CPU. It was this key that allowed the current generation of hacked MS BIOSes found in modchips.

      The key being discussed here is a 2048 bit RSA key used to encrypt a hash of executable contents. The executable file will not be run by the Xbox unless the decrypted hash matches that of the file being run. The effect of this is that only people who hold the correct encryption key can 'sign' executables so that the Xbox will run them. If you take a signed executable and change even one bit, the decrypted hash will not match and it will not run.

      The public key for the RSA encryption has been recovered from the MS code and is available in the Documentation section of the Xbox Linux site. The bruteforce attack on this will involve trying to decompose this 2048-bit number into two prime factors which were originally multiplied together to form the public key.

      If these numbers can be recovered then the owner of the numbers will be able to sign their own executables and the evil 'Microsoft Code Only' Xbox will have been definitively broken.
      • The key might not be put in an especially vulnerable place like the bus to calculate the hash. The hash may be computed in the hardware. But given the incredible size of the number (2048 bit), wouldn't it simply be easier to dissect the hardware and try to figure out the key that way?

        The X-Box runs, after all, in a "hostile" environment. It doesn't check up against MS servers every time it runs. So all the relevant keys used for encryption, public or private, have to exist in some form or another on the X-Box itself.

        I might be misunderstanding the issue. Anyone care to explain this for me?
        • It's a public-key system. So although the public key is indeed somewhere on the box, so it can check the signature, the private key, which you use to sign the executables is (presumably) locked in a filing cabinet in a disused lavatory somewhere in the bowels of Microsoft with a sign on the door saying "beware of the leopard".

      • The key being discussed here is a 2048 bit RSA key used to encrypt a hash of executable contents. The executable file will not be run by the Xbox unless the decrypted hash matches that of the file being run. The effect of this is that only people who hold the correct encryption key can 'sign' executables so that the Xbox will run them. If you take a signed executable and change even one bit, the decrypted hash will not match and it will not run.

        Thus there are two obvious approaches: find the public key or find a hash collision. I am not an Xbox hacker, so I don't know: what hash function are they using, and in what mode? The public key signing is likely to be secure, but perhaps the hash function is not?


        • Its a very slightly modified SHA-1.

          You can find an interesting and clear writeup of the exact algorithm in a document by Franz Lehner, on the Xbox Linux site here [sourceforge.net].

  • he'll want Lindows running on it without any modifications.
    Consumers see Dell, HP, Gateway, and other popular brands while Lindows is on a generic box. Maybe those K-Mart boxes aren't selling, so he wants a more popular box.
  • Activly funding a project to reverse engineer something that is protected by the DCMA?

    Not that i agree with the law, but by doing this dont they open themselves up for legal action?

    • I don't believe that this falls under the DCMA because this encryption is not used for copyright protection. It doesn't prevent me from bit for bit copying a dvd (as I understand it). What this part of the encryption prevents is "untrusted" software from being run. It is Microsoft's way of keeping third parties from releasing X-Box software they do not approve of.

  • Collision is sufficient (Score:2, Interesting)

    by ehack ( 115197 )
    Absent Palladium, just generating a collision pwould probably be enough to get a bootloader through. A neat trick would be to add to some existing software which has already run the checksum . Of course, distributing such a disk would be a gross violation of Microsoft's copyright , and thus defeat the point of the exercise.
    However a patch might be a different matter, especially in countries that do not agree with the DCMA.

    There are LOTS of ways to get around protection when the hardware can be tampered with, even if you don't modify its structure ... just think of a server with an unknown root pasword sitting on your desk.

    • Re:Collision is sufficient (Score:4, Informative)

      by warmcat ( 3545 ) on Sunday January 05, 2003 @10:23AM (#5019415)
      That's my understanding too: if you can make your edits to an already-signed executable, and then twiddle unused bits until the hash matches the original again then your modified executable will be accepted.

      Franz Lehner did have a look at this a while back, with a view to getting some guidence from the hash algorithm as to which bits to change where. The problem was that by design, the hash algorithm loses information in the form of arithmetic carries. It quickly becomes hopeless trying to keep track of what bits are known and what bits are Xs because of carry losses; very quickly the whole thing becomes Xs.

      Even so, it seems likely that even randomly twiddling bits looking for a hash collision is massively more likely to give results than the direct factoring method.
  • I know many nerds want to give MS a kick on the nose but all they do with this is helping them fine tuning the Palladium technology. If i want to play games i sure as h*ll dont buy an Xbox. If i want linux, well PS2 already have linux, why bother with the useless Xbox? Its just an old ancient PC by now, you can get one cheaply from Ebay.

    Pointless and stupid projekt, do something useful instead. Build an emulator for Xbox, that would be useful atleast.

  • Reality check (Score:4, Informative)

    by hyrdra ( 260687 ) on Sunday January 05, 2003 @10:30AM (#5019439) Homepage Journal
    When the XBOX starts up, it loads the hash of the header into memory and decrypts a 2048 bit RSA signature and compares this to the header hash. If it matches, the program proceeds and it loads another section and does the same thing. There is no way to get around this either than knowing the private key or a hardware modification.

    The RSA signature used to sign/for comparison purposes used with Xbox execuatables is 2048 bits long.

    Common secure internet traffic, carrying thousands of credit card numbers as we speak, uses 128 bit keys (almost always).

    It's virturally impossible with today's computational power and methods to break a 2048 bit key. Even if you somehow had all the processing power of all the current distributed systems, it would still take many thousands of years to break using classical methods. You either need several thousand years or an optical/DNA computer whose concept hasn't been refined yet.

    In case some of your forget: it gets exponetionally harder as the length of the key increases. It's not like you just have to search a 128 bit key space 16 times. There are fancy methods where by you can get away with knowing some of the key like differential analysis, but when you increase the size of the key the performance of those tend to fall off also where you have no increase over brute force and man in the middle attacks.

    So don't even think about joining that futile brute force effort, because it will just waste your time. What Lindows should have done is hire a hit man/career criminal to break into Microsoft or a 3rd party who has the key and steal it. Or optionally pay off an Xbox developer or employee who has similar access. Either way, it would be both cheaper and actually give the real key, unlike all of this nonsense.

    • Re:Reality check (Score:2, Informative)

      by Wonko the Sane ( 25252 )
      You are comparing apples and oranges. You are talking about 2048 bit symmetric key vs a 128 bit symmetric key.

      Public key systems (such as PGP/GPG) use an asymmetric public key (2048 bit) to encrypt a symmetric session key (128 bit).

      In any case, you can't compare the time needed to crack a asymmetric key to that of a symmetric key, since they are completely different types.

    • Re:Reality check (Score:5, Informative)

      by ssimpson ( 133662 ) <slashdot.samsimpson@com> on Sunday January 05, 2003 @11:34AM (#5019642) Homepage

      The RSA signature used to sign/for comparison purposes used with Xbox execuatables is 2048 bits long.

      Common secure internet traffic, carrying thousands of credit card numbers as we speak, uses 128 bit keys (almost always).

      You are confusing symmetric and asymmetric ciphers. SSL (or "secure internet traffic", if you must) uses 128-bit symmetric keys coupled with larger (1,024-bits or greater usually) asymmetric keys.

      In case some of your forget: it gets exponetionally harder as the length of the key increases.

      "In case some of you forget" should be rephrased to "I'm going to state something authoritative now and hope I'm right". The 2,048-bit key you are alluding to is a asymmetric key (RSA). The fastest algorithms for factoring and computing discrete logs are sub-exponential!

    • Ironically, Hollywood found an easier way to break any encryption in their movie "Sneakers."

  • How DO you get your code authenticated? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Does anyone know how game developers get the codes to authenticate their executables? Do they just upload them to some secured server of Microsoft, and get the signature back?

    If that's the case, getting into that server might be easier than brute-forcing the key.
  • Is there any way quantum computing an be used to do this?

    Which of the following is smallest?:
    1. The length of time that it would take to break the key using conventional methods.
    2. The length of time it would take to build a quantum computer to break the key.
    3. The platform lifespan of the XBox.

  • What a waste of time... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by waltc ( 546961 )
    Why would any sane person spend hundreds of thousands of his own dollars just to run Linux on an Xbox? I mean, why not just buy a $199 Lindows box from Walmart, instead?

    The plan at its heart is very simple:

    (1) If you want to run Xbox games buy an Xbox

    (2) If you want to run Linux on similar hardware buy a Lindows machine

    The guy is acting as if you can't run Linux on anything *except* an Xbox, and Microsoft is standing in the way!....What rubbish! You can run Linux on practically *anything*--hence there is no need or justification for this at all.

    Microsoft does not market, imply, or pretend in any fashion that the xBox is a general-purpose computer. It is manufactured and marketed as a game console. If people buy it under any other delusion--well, that's their problem as I see it. The won't be the first to try and turn a sou's ear into a silk purse.

    I have to believe, honestly, that the poor fellow is suffering mentally somehow, since there are far better ways to gain publicity about your products for the same amount of money. Interesting that you don't see Microsoft pulling boneheaded stunts like this--maybe that's why they've been successful (hint.)

    • Well, XBox seems to be a precursor to Palladium. If he cracks it, then the break could be used as an example of the problems with such security measures, and it would have major repercussions (sp?).

      However, based on what my friends who understand crypto say, a 2048-bit key is pretty tough to crack, so success is unlikely even with a distributed project.
    • Fail to understand the use?

      First of all, as I recall the Lindows box from Wal-Mart is $299.

      The X-Box from Wal-Mart is $199.

      X-Box specs:
      Coppermine Pentium 3 processor (about 733Mhz as I recall)
      Nvidia gpu which falls somewhere between a Geforce 3 and Geforce 4 in power (according to anandtech)
      10GB hd
      64 MB of RAM

      By comparison the Lindows Box has
      800Mhz Via C3
      40GB hd
      onboard graphics (ugh)
      128 MB of RAM (I think PC133)

      It seems to me that the Pentium will probably outperform the C3, and know the X-Box GPU is far more powerful than what you have in the "Lindows Box." Assuming the extra hd space and RAM makes up for this (it doesn't) the X-Box is still $100 cheaper.

      Edge: X-Box

  • He would be better off asking MS to sign it (Score:3, Interesting)

    by codepunk ( 167897 ) on Sunday January 05, 2003 @12:53PM (#5019929)
    Put together a boot loader and ask MS to sign it. If they do not turn around and sue them under the terms of the approved judgement and or a anti-trust suit.
  • Then where has my 200,000 dollars gone?

  • fips (Score:3, Insightful)

    by JDizzy ( 85499 ) on Sunday January 05, 2003 @01:18PM (#5020048) Homepage Journal
    Its strange to consider that Microsoft didn't protect parts of the hardware with fips rated hardware like some crypto cards are. In case you don't know what FIPS means, it is "Federal Information Protection Standard", and parts of it covers secure hardware. Stuff like crypto accellerator boards that self destruct if you attempt to x-ray, or break the hermetricly sealled gel enclosures. Stuff like that protects the boards from people who would attempt to reverse engineer hardware. Microsoft *did* do some things to make life hard for hackers with the way the HDD works. Microsoft does stuff that is more anoying than a barrier to reverse engineering.

    Locating the private keys for the games would be the best way to hack an xbox. Considering a modified xbox will not jive with future xbox games, and or network servives... the hardware mod is not desireable.

    Further more, hacking contests should be managed by the original vendor, in this case Microsoft. Think of the RSA crypto challenges. Those are fair contests, that actually interest crypto folks to invest serrious effort, and brain power.

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