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[Devedander]

First off to all those preaching about how wrong it is to desire to play backups on Live, that's all fine and good, but if you look at the recent ban thread there is no shortage of people who played downloaded backups and that goes to say that there are a HUGE number of just straight up pirates here (yes they might have downloaded copies of their legit games beucase they don't have the hardware to make their own backups blah blah blah... we all know just how thin the curtain of plasuable deniability we hide behind really is) so really you are doing pretty much no good... these people came while that message was being handed out, pirated right through it and aren't going to stop because you say it again.   It doesn't solve anything and for those who say it but pirate anyway, you aren't impressing anyone worth impressing.

Next up this is definitely technically impressive, but just like everyone else I can see that it's not particularly useful as the price of an unbanned key pretty much is the price of whatever xbox it comes out of... there is no value I can see of moving a key from an unbanned box to a banned one as the end result is no gain... still one banned and one unbanned.

Sure there may be straggler cases where someone modded one box very heavily and doesn't want to loose his artwork buying a new box or something, but for the intents most of us would have for it (get ourselves unbanned without buying a new 360) it doesn't have much valid merit.

The only merit it would have in that face is that broken boxes could have their key salvaged just like the other parts, and unscrupulous people sending their boxes back to MS for RROD replacement might try to keep their keys before sending it off in hopes of being able to use it later.

As a potential downside, depending on how difficult it is to generate the keys themselves I do see how this could lead to people with legit boxes being banned right out of the box.  The chances are miniscule but I do seem to recall I think back when Quake 3 came out, people were key genning it and enough people did that they actually got real keys and there were indeed people buying copies of the game that would report this key already in use.

I hope this turns out to be something great for the community (ie the ability to do this leads to the ability to do something else like run homebrew) but as it is it seems at best a wash and a small possible threat to the legit customer base out there...

[ORange-9mm]

Congrats!

[CHdude]

QUOTE(bucky007 @ Nov 23 2007, 01:49 PM)

great job,

But what would happen if 2 consoles with the same ID tried to log into live at the same time.

Both would get banned i Guess.

I don't think so, but if the modded console get banned, the unmodded will be banned too!
Because i think that they don't monitor like u think. But in case if something is suspicious (the box failed a test for example) then they are going to flag it (put it on a list) and, if necessarily, they will ban it. So if u using a key/id which is on that "Blacklist" u will not be able to us Live...

But, woulden't it be possible to create a Key generator, like for all those programs?

[$lacker]

So how long is the key? Any mention?
If enough dead keys can be gathered to ascertain any sort of pattern, it wouldn't be that hard to set something up to brute force good keys on Live. Keep trying and rotating keys until eventually it gets in. Record that and continue. The more that was found out about what was a good key and what was bad, the more efficient the generator could be made

[martsmall]

if they did ban both boxes id imagine a lot of ppl would complain with thier box not being modded @ all, so microsoft dont want the bad press that would go with it its had enough , stoping ppl that have modded thier 360 is 1 thing but banning a user who's had thier key robbed is a nogo

[H&ck3r]

Great news, but as people have said whats going to happen when people start getting banned out of the box, thats just wrong, LOL

[kraaa]

downgrade banned 5787 PAL to 4532 NTSC U, updated again to 5787 via HD. Still banned.

So you can turn your PAL xbox into a NTSC? FUCKING AWESOME!

[manemzjum]

QUOTE(gunzdiesel @ Nov 23 2007, 08:34 AM)

I don't really see how this helps.  I mean, unless you have a 360 that's not banned to get the CPU key just laying around, that means you'd have to buy another.  If you end up buying another, that'll run you about $250 or however much they're going for these days.  It seems to me that the logical idea would be to have a modded to run backups, and unmodded to run legit games on live.  And who's to say how long your new key will last until that's banned.  If it ends up getting banned every four to five months, it's not worth it in my opinion.  $500 bucks a year to buy new keys?  I'd rather just buy the freaking games and play legally.
Flame away, cause I know it's coming.

Yes but how much do you spend a year on games 500 bucks thats like 10 games max if you but a core console every 5-6 months at 200 bucks thats 400 bucks a year or 8 games but within that year you have like 40 backups so i think it would be cheaper to just buy a new core console every 6 months  i think i would spend more than 200 on games in 6 months so a console would be cheaper for me

QUOTE(H&ck3r @ Nov 25 2007, 12:50 AM)

Great news, but as people have said whats going to happen when people start getting banned out of the box, thats just wrong, LOL

come on you must know at least 1 person tyhat does not play online i have about 5 m8's who done play online so thats like a 5 bans for me im good for another 3 years of ban dodging

[Martinchris23]

QUOTE(manemzjum @ Nov 25 2007, 01:27 PM)

Yes but how much do you spend a year on games 500 bucks thats like 10 games max if you but a core console every 5-6 months at 200 bucks thats 400 bucks a year or 8 games but within that year you have like 40 backups so i think it would be cheaper to just buy a new core console every 6 months  i think i would spend more than 200 on games in 6 months so a console would be cheaper for me

huh???

QUOTE(manemzjum @ Nov 25 2007, 01:27 PM)

come on you must know at least 1 person tyhat does not play online i have about 5 m8's who done play online so thats like a 5 bans for me im good for another 3 years of ban dodging

Do you think your mates are just going to let you crack open their Xbox, voiding the warranty and potentially causing permanent damage if you screw it up? Lets say one of the decides he wants to try live and you've already banned him? Are you going to buy him a new console? The cost of an Arcade console over 3 years is nothing: $7.77 a month for a brand new unit, or around $5 a month for a pre-owned unit.

Seriously, just buy a core/arcade console for online play. Leave it unmodded and use your retails online.

You *do* have the retail copies, don't you?

[freyyr890]

QUOTE($lacker @ Nov 24 2007, 10:43 AM)

So how long is the key? Any mention?
If enough dead keys can be gathered to ascertain any sort of pattern, it wouldn't be that hard to set something up to brute force good keys on Live. Keep trying and rotating keys until eventually it gets in. Record that and continue. The more that was found out about what was a good key and what was bad, the more efficient the generator could be made

I do recall reading somewhere that it's something extraordinarily nastily big, a 1024-bit key I think.  2^1024 possible combinations = not nice.

However, if we could somehow convince the National Security Agency's cryptographers that Microsoft's private key is a threat to national security - then we could be getting somewhere.

[HotKnife420]

I don't see why people are under the illusion that a keygen is likely. IIRC, the key is 256-bit encryption, and each unique. Aside from that, it's stated that the entire keyvault needs to be copied; not just one key. Keygenning the entire keyvault doesn't sound like something that's feasible, let alone possible.

 On the topic at hand, though, this is a great discovery. It's possible this may lead to another unbanning solution, which may or may not require replacing the entire kv. For all those who can't think of a possible use for this, consider if you had multiple boxes. I believe it's possible to change the region of your 360 without replacing the kv. You could have a japanese box and an american box and a pal box (or whatever combination floats your boat), and one of those boxes could have previously been banned, but you have 2 good kv's still. Well, you're only one person, so it's not like you'd be using more than one xbox at a time anyway.

[Xbox-Jon]

I disagree with that (IMG:style_emoticons/default/unsure.gif)

theres got to be a set routine for every key, microsoft wont just say "yer we'll put this number here" etc there would be a program at manufacturing that decides what key to put in based on what its been programmed to do, so if this is the only way to get unbanned then i think there would inevitably be a keygen available with software to make unbanning easier, other than that i can see the unbanning process being abandoned altogether (IMG:style_emoticons/default/dry.gif)

although its a great find (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

This post has been edited by Xbox-Jon: Nov 26 2007, 11:57 AM

[torne]

QUOTE(Xbox-Jon @ Nov 26 2007, 10:56 AM)

theres got to be a set routine for every key, microsoft wont just say "yer we'll put this number here" etc there would be a program at manufacturing that decides what key to put in based on what its been programmed to do

Many of the keys are almost certainly randomly generated. During manufacturing the xbox is booted up while connected to a network, and the hypervisor detects that the console currently has no CPU key. It connects to a manufacturing server over the network (this is a secure challenge/response that we can't forge, before you ask) and randomly generates itself a CPU key which it tells the server. Other keys are probably generated in a similar fashion.

There doesn't need to be any magical algorithm to decide whether a key is valid - MS can just have a big list of all the randomly generated valid keys, since they have a perfectly good opportunity to record them during manufacturing.

[Xbox-Jon]

wow, i would have never thought microsoft would have made truly random keys rather than have set sequences creating a "random key" although i fully understand if they do this they can simply just have a big list.

Im sure the hacking boys will do us proud though

[ninjashoes]

for the first time in his life Bill Gates tasted fear