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[eyric101]

QUOTE(dev435 @ May 19 2007, 09:47 AM)

on another note i did phone microsoft yesterday i told them if i played only retail online will i be ok and they said that was fine no bull take it or leave it i even got my friend to ring up as well and they said the same thing!

 

Hmm yea they will be just fine until they are banned!  If reports are to be believed, people with unmodified boxes are being banned.  Then again everyone in jail is innocent, at least thats what they will tell ya.

[marcdaddy]

ELITE 78k
FLASHED BEFORE EVEN PLUGGING IN ETHERNET CABLE
DID SPRING UPDATE
NEVER PLAYED A BACKUP ON LIVE OR EVEN WITH THE NETWORK CABLE IN
NOT BANNED ALL ORIGINALS AND XBLA WORKS FINE

[yonder1983]

sirpablo. Yes, you are right i flash my system long after i had xbox live so it don't sound like i theory is a fact.Are we ever going to sign in again with same console?

[Canard-WC]

I kinda like this theory... But it would mean that M$ might dump your eeprom (or do a CRC, MD5 hash or any other hash signature) the first and only time your console goes on live.
So they would have a database with sth like :
Console Number - Hash Signature

for each console who went on Live at least once.

This is pretty interesting, and making a hash of the firmware isn't that complicated...

But this wouldn't explain that you can freely upgrade your firmware if you first flashed it before going on live for the first time :/ That's the only dark point here...

[tigerk]

1 of 3 xbox's not banned. The one that is not banned = Flashed out of the box.

[HansiHusten]

Well i will give it a try. Will get a used one from ebay which was 100% used offline
Then we will see... gimme some days

[espionix]

Not Banned
UK
Xbox 360 Premium
Flashed After Online
Hitachi 78 FK Maximus 1.6

Never been online with a backup copy, never even had the ethernet lead in at the same time.

Continually play legit GoW all the time, even yesterday/today and i'm not banned.

I flashed before the spring update, maybe around january.

Hope this helps.

[HansiHusten]

QUOTE(Dracuger Unban @ May 19 2007, 04:53 PM)

When i Saw this theory come up on the big "Live Stopped Working for Me last Night" i was one of the 1st to shoot this theory down. I'm Banned and i got mine in Sept 2006 flashed the day i got it, but didn't start going on live till March. BUT there is still something that we didn't consider, i had the latest firmware at the time. Maybe only firmwares after a version that are not getting banned, because mine i'm guessing was out dated now. Maybe the People with the newer firmwares that flashed right outta the box are the lucky ones.

Btw the other case of a out of a Box flashed xbox being banned is someone in October 2006 that i read on that post, he got his a month after mine, chances are we might have had the same firmware.

Well another "1 Post Guy".... and he just joined. Maybe he got banned here in forum - i dont care but i will try this out of the box thingy for sure. would be great to see some more responses

[GWF]

To the best of my knowledge my 360 was flashed before it went online.
Although I have a problem, since the bans kicked in I've been afraid to sign in on live so I currently don't know whether I'm banned or not   .

Are there any others in the same situation as me? What are you planning on doing?

Personally I'm gonna ride it out and wait to see if anyone figures out for certain what triggers the bans.

[Canard-WC]

I'll wait a few weeks and if I can find 300€ to sped I'll buy a new box and do what I said earlier (unplug the sata cable before the first boot then flash then plug the dvd drive back on the box, and do a first boot with the dvd linked to the box, and at last go on live), i'll tell you what I can find with this...

[Fazered]

I have to say I would seem to agree, I had come to a similar early conclusion. However there is still something that puzzles me. Why wouldn't MS just do this process during manufacturing, all xbox's and turned on and tested? Why leave a window of opportunity?

Also why does it have to be when you log into Live? The 360 has a fully functioning OS that wouldn't need to be connected to live to do a firmware hash. If you aren't doing it during manufacturing then why not do it when the  console is first used, then upload it to Live when the user first logs on?

Perhaps the hash is taken regularly (each system boot? certain games? during update?) and then the most recent is uploaded when you log onto Live. Then they could compare on each occasion.

I certainly think there will be a combination of methodologies that MS is employing that will make this harder to decipher. Firmware hashing is the simplest and must be almost certain. But disc checking is also very likely.

I think that pre-release software is very unlikely. There is pre-release software for good reason. Either it's non final code or it's final code released early.  Non final code is used for testing and review and early final code is also used for review. I used to do game reviews for a magazine and we get early copies of final code all the time. They're not going to potentially ban all the reviewers 360's, no way! I will warn though that quite a bit of the pre-final code we got sent for review included a unique identifier so they could trace any leak. If that got out on the internet they would probably ban, as there shouldn't be 10,000 copies of it floating around and it would be a fitting punishment for the person who leaked the game to be punished. (We were warned all the time of the severity of the response if we were shown to have leaked a game)

[SirPablo]

QUOTE(Canard-WC @ May 19 2007, 04:26 PM)

I'll wait a few weeks and if I can find 300€ to sped I'll buy a new box and do what I said earlier (unplug the sata cable before the first boot then flash then plug the dvd drive back on the box, and do a first boot with the dvd linked to the box, and at last go on live), i'll tell you what I can find with this...

THANK YOU for that, My new one wont arrive now till June 16 for one reason or another.....

[mattfigaro]

Samsung MS28
modded out of the box before switching it on.
Had fw 5.2 prior to spring update, then upgraded to 5.3 AFTER spring update and had played online with back ups until people reported Banning.
Now using the original disc and not banned yet.
Only play Ridge racer online, so maybe new tech was added to games since then

[SirPablo]

QUOTE(Fazered @ May 19 2007, 04:29 PM)

I have to say I would seem to agree, I had come to a similar early conclusion. However there is still something that puzzles me. Why wouldn't MS just do this process during manufacturing, all xbox's and turned on and tested? Why leave a window of opportunity?

Also why does it have to be when you log into Live? The 360 has a fully functioning OS that wouldn't need to be connected to live to do a firmware hash. If you aren't doing it during manufacturing then why not do it when the  console is first used, then upload it to Live when the user first logs on?

Perhaps the hash is taken regularly (each system boot? certain games? during update?) and then the most recent is uploaded when you log onto Live. Then they could compare on each occasion.

I certainly think there will be a combination of methodologies that MS is employing that will make this harder to decipher. Firmware hashing is the simplest and must be almost certain. But disc checking is also very likely.

I think that pre-release software is very unlikely. There is pre-release software for good reason. Either it's non final code or it's final code released early.  Non final code is used for testing and review and early final code is also used for review. I used to do game reviews for a magazine and we get early copies of final code all the time. They're not going to potentially ban all the reviewers 360's, no way! I will warn though that quite a bit of the pre-final code we got sent for review included a unique identifier so they could trace any leak. If that got out on the internet they would probably ban, as there shouldn't be 10,000 copies of it floating around and it would be a fitting punishment for the person who leaked the game to be punished. (We were warned all the time of the severity of the response if we were shown to have leaked a game)

Some very good points and from speaking to a few others it seems as though its not what was first thought.

It now seems that if you POWER UP the box, it dumps the info ready for upload, So to change the question, Any one NOT powered up before flashing and still been banned?

[delain]

Just to throw in my experience...

My bro bought a 360 sometime early-mid 2006. Played it for a few months without even activating live. Tried the free 1 month gold trial and played using originals (console not modded at this stage).

I then flashed with maximus-garyopa 2.3 at the start of january (was on a silver live account at this stage). Now unfortunatly i can't remember if i had applied the fall update before this because i did not have the 360 hooked up to the lan all the time (but I would have updated the dash afterward if it wasn't already).

I've never played a multiplayer game using a backup (having a silver account prevents this anyway). I am pretty sure I've used backups that have not been media stealthed too (and im not sure it matters with hitachi fw anyway).

Then I heard about the disc jitter thing and decided to stop using live until I flashed my fw to the new release (I barely use live anyway but its nice to have). However I just turned the 360 on today and noticed that my bro had already updated to the latest may 9th dash! Not only that, but he played a backup since the update too, before I had a chance to flash the disc jitter fw. Note I still have not touched the firmware since my initial flashing.

Thankfully, however, I'm not banned! Although now I'm probably on the blacklist for the next ban session because of the new disc jitter detection

So this presents a few scenarios:
 1. MS just hasnt got around to banning my console id yet and they are batching them up for logistical reasons.
 2. You don't get banned unless you have at some stage played a backup on live, and it looks like this detection scheme (PSN/PSI/DMI/other) has been there since the fall update or before it, or is in some game code on certain titles.
 3. Certain firmware versions had some method of detection of backup discs via the dash, be they played over live or not.

There may be some implications in flashing the firmware depending on what dash you had at the time and I apologise for not being able to be clearer on that.

But anyway, if I am indeed in the clear, it appears that it is not the fact that you flash your firmware out of the box that helps you slide under the radar. In fact judging by the evidence from what I have read over the past few days (e.g. c4e saying modded firmware detection is most likely not possible and customer service reps saying modded fw is ok as long as you use originals) is that the 360's ability to interact with the dvd firmware is quite limited and that this marraige/hashing method is not the one ms are using. This is purely hypothetical and I could be wrong.

I am going to leave the lan cable unplugged so no futher interaction can occur with Big Brother and leave the firmware as is (I am assuming the damage any new detection methods can do has already been done) and I will report back on my ban status over the next few weeks.

Phew, all done!

Edit: Maybe I would have been banned had I flashed my firmware again before the spring update, but I don't want to try it now just in case this hash thing is correct and I escaped it the first time by having an old dash.