Every XEX contains a 'media flag', which states from which kind of media the XEX is allowed to boot. For update files, this flag is set to 'allowed to boot from any kind of media', which means it will run from a backup disk, hard disk or whatever. For game XEX'es however, this flag is set to 'only allowed to boot from original game disk media'. So, if this is the case, the xbox checks if the disk is an 'original' and if not, it won't boot. When they released the kiosk disk, they wrongly set the flag inside the XEX to 'allowed to boot from any kind of medium', so the game would boot from a backup and wouldn't need a SS (till MS updated the kernel to block this particular game disk of course

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So in short, the media flag inside the XEX specifies if a valid SS is needed or not. So, unfortunately, this isn't a thing we can exploit to get unsigned code running (and we can't change the media flag, since that would break the XEX'es signature)
i have to correct you a bit, the xex isn't blocked. people with the original can still boot it. the problem is that the backup disks are somehow blocked.