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[Heykrop]

Xbox-Savage   Thanks for the compliment.  Anyway.  It was just a thought.  AS for something else I noticed.   The 1000 people on the forums that got banned in the last 10 days.  Where???   I just did several searches of the entire forum for 30 days and newer on "Banned" and others and I only found maybe 2 or 3 that sounded as though they could be related to this.  The rest all seemed to have either inadvertantly connected with the mod on or something similar and all seemed to have been corrected by getting a new eeprom.  Granted the banning can take some time in a few cases but I certainly did not find 1000 banned users.  Maybe one of the moderators can run a more conclusive scan/search of the forum.

[CHRONOSTORM]

QUOTE

the smartxx code does not use cromwell code. no joke in fact it is, that cromwell uses smartxx code, which was given as a gift to the xbox-linux team This code is not GPL and if you not belive, you should check the CVS logs of the last year of the Cromwell code. So smartxx code already public for several sections. btw: maybe we forgot to tell. As there are "mixtures" you all know, this happens. like a memcpy from here, or maybe a inb() or something. It's more the question of "does a single line make a code to release GPL if he came from GPL, but can not be coded different? As the SmartXX team is not willing to go into history as "we never gave the community anything back" we decided, and this is agreed , that Smartxx code gets public after the expected Live time of 1 year of the product. (except the sections of the code, which are bought products, like RSA libs and this kind of things. -we have to clean very carefully) Otherwise, things like SCO can happen. Also there is dynamically code exchange between some members of Xbox-linux, and we are proud to announce, that we will give again one video mode of the new upcomming Video-encoding chip to the public again, as happened with focus. Agreed, we never reacted to this issue, as we thought, this would be clear from beginning. Ok, learned something. sorry for this. hampti

[EvilRabidPenguin]

if you have been banned post it here:
http://forums.xbox-s...T&f=53&t=184598

[tsantsa]

Ok, I didn't read every post here so I don't know if this was covered, but here it goes:  I think it would be stupid of M$ to ban based on any modding.  

Reasons: People who mod, will do so with or without Live service.  They are paying customers since archive copy games CANNOT be played UNmodded or even LIVE.   This means that a person has to at least RENT or OWN the very game they want to play Live.  

It's not like modders don't have alternative onlinee choices!  Let people mod AND pay for Live service.  M$ really wins in both cases.  I tell you that if the X was unmoddable, I would still have one.  AND pay for LIVE.  I am modded now and if they do checks for HDD differences, then I will cancel my service.  Fuck em.

[Telemachus]

All of this is not answering the real question at hand.

"xboxlive2.bin is the new HDD change-detecting code, whose disassembly was released by SmartXX."

What is meant by "NEW"?

The last update to the live dash was when 2.0 came out.  The next update will be with Tsunami.  

Doesn't that mean that ALL of us have been scanned already, and that going on Live now is a mute issue?

Or has there been a recent update that I missed?

[Tommy Vercetti]

IS it possible that maybe M$ is checking the hard drives on Xbox's to see how much space the average user has used??

Maybe some kind of recon to justify the reason they removed the hard drive from the next xbox console??  Maybe to see if a hard drive is REALLY a good idea or not?

Just an idea.

[shanafan]

QUOTE (Tommy Vercetti @ Mar 8 2004, 01:19 AM)

IS it possible that maybe M$ is checking the hard drives on Xbox's to see how much space the average user has used?? Maybe some kind of recon to justify the reason they removed the hard drive from the next xbox console??  Maybe to see if a hard drive is REALLY a good idea or not? Just an idea.

You know.. this does make sense. Maybe MS is seeing how many modded Xbox users there are out there, and whether they should, or shouldn't, place a HD in Xbox 2.

If there is a HD in Xbox 2, God knows it will be modded just enough as the current Xbox.

[Tommy Vercetti]

But I was thinking more along the lines of not just M$ looking at the modded xbox's but ALL Hard drives in gerneral to see how much space the average user is acutally using.  If they see the average users uses a few gigs then maybe the change the design on Xbox2 and keep the hard drive.

If it falls down around a few hundred megs,  then they stick with ditching it.  Who knows.  But I think this is the most logical reason for this kind of check.  Just my 2 cents.

EDIT::  I see what your saying Shanafan,  that could be another good reason as well.  Lets just hope its both of these reasons and nothing else.  We will eventually find out.

[jaxxmanuk]

Seem's to me the only losers would be M$.

[Tommy Vercetti]

QUOTE (jaxxmanuk @ Mar 8 2004, 02:23 AM)

Whether they start banning or not the real question is................ Why would MS want to cripple a large percentage of its own income? lol You can't use your XBOX on Live with it Modded, so you have to BUY originals and you can't use Live without paying for it. If I was to get banned 2day I'd cancel that subscription and just not bother! Seem's to me the only losers would be M$.

You couldnt be any more wrong dude.  

First off,  people with modded xbox's only make up a FRACTION of Xbox gamers and Live gamers.

M$ wouldnt be crippled on any sort of way.

And the only person that loses by cancelling your Live account is YOU.  You lose the money you already invested in it.  And you lose the money for the rest of the term you paid for.   And like I said,  we are only a fraction of the Xbox's out there.

And everyone just said screw and cancel it,  then Live would never get better and improve.  Its only been out for a year and its getting better and better.  I personall like Live,  its easy to use and is always loaded with gamers.  I use XBC and sometimes its a major PITA!

The only losers is us.  Not M$.


EDIT::  pwn3d page 33

[SlaYer]

It amazes me how people think that because M$ will loose a few modders from xbox live, they will actually care.  What's a few tens of thousands in subscriptions to them?  They care about fame and a PR program that shows how "dedicated" they are to "fair play" by not allowing modders to "spoil" their perfect service.  An image they will undoubtably push when selling their M$ enabled appliances soon enough.

What about M$ making people buy retail consoles to play live?  Does that not in fact increase their profit?  -->  Actually they lose over $100 for each console sold and they would rather sell games, not consoles, as contradictory as that may sound.

Is the HD code detection real?  --> Honestly, it makes sense for them to do more and more to keep their image of perfection and "fair play" and keep collecting information.  They check for mod chips, bioses, files, HD contents, etc... and ban you for any one of them, so why would they not check for HD info and possibly ban you?

Did SmartXX detect the problem only to fix it?  --> Well, it is hard to say, particulary knowing M$ and possibly since the code seems to have been there for a while.  However if they are smart enough to make use of it for PR purposes and did not invent the problem in the first place, then more power to them.  Nothing wrong with fixing an existing problem and taking credit for the fix, regardless how old the problem is.  If people recall, NitroXX, from the same engineers was one of the the first chips to be "stealth" and not allow detection even if "off" by masking the LPC bus signals.  Ingenious indeed. (NO I DO NOT WORK OR SPEAK FOR THEM! )

What is interesting is that you cannot have a modchip/hacked bios active and use the Live service,  so anything a modchip/bios can do to block things (much like the Xecuter does) is useless.  It's like a catch 22:  easy to fix if on, but cant be on to fix it.  However, they might have found other means and honestly, I hope they did.  I surely do not want to have to remove my 120GB HD once Halo2 comes out

My advice to everyone is not to jump to conclusions, wait till more testing is done and don't automatically assume that because someone has an idea about a fix they invented the problem or it's marketing bullshit.  Give them the benefit of the doubt.

If you do not a few spare virgin EEPROMS than maybe you should not take the plunge and go on Live for a while, otherwise by all means test it out, nothing to loose.

I'm curiousely awaiting the verdict on this one too

All the best to you all!

[{{DEMON}}]

yea that last long post made 100% sense to me..SLAYER i agree 100% with you.. and I love your Albums!  great band... (im a fan)   <--- thats a joke to all you kiddies

Just an update from page 30 or 31 from me..

I've been logged onto live for 12+ hrs, just idle... and i have a different HDD locked.. (took the chip out, see previosu post) I have yet to be banned.

I don't think they are banning based on HDD.. (yet..)

{DEMON}

[Troed]

It is indeed a bit ironic that he's speaking for SmartXX now.

[cap269]

I think I was right!

From the X=S news page: "The reason I provided source code is so that it can easily be audited as being correct.
BTW, those looking for the XDK code that executes this: Look for places that call XcVerifyPKCS1Signature. Xbox Live games call it in two places, and one is the one you are looking for."

That function, XcVerifyPKCS1Signature, is part of what I was talking about in this thread yesterday with the XBL using the hard drive info with other variables to make a signature key for online game transactions using the PKCS1 algorithm.

The quote says that Xbox Live games call it in two places ... If this was NEW code, how could my Mechassault .xbe which was released in 2002 be calling this? This is a faux pas from SmartXX that PROVES that this is old code, and is NOT a criteria for banning a box.

Let's go snooping through the rest of the binaries and see how much scare we can cook up...

PS .. The Xbox-Linux source code also references this same function. Now, hmm, I didn't know there were XBL games written in Linux!?!
http://cvs.xbox-linu...ort.tbl?rev=1.2

Or this: http://cvs.hte.sf.ne...eimp.cc?rev=1.2 (Xbox Exports #344) Now how does this have anything to do with XBL?!

The point is, .xbe files are on ROM, and can't be modified. How then, is an XBE written in 2002 going to "predict" the ability to call this code 2 years later? ... this code has been there forever for key gen purposes.

[cap269]

Troed, what you say is true. But the name of the function quoted is  XcVerifyPKCS1Signature.  ... Verify Signature ... not something like "send spy data to MS" ... I reiterate it is used for creating/checking online gaming transaction signatures, not hardware identification. The hard drive info could certainly have been added recently, I suppose, but only for the purpose of augmenting the security on the signature keys.