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[Blackbolt]

I have been banned today. Damn MS. But it was my fault, I knew the risk and now I pay for it. I am just gonna buy another 360 and play my legit games with that.

Anyway, a friend of mine modded his 360 around the same time as me, but never ever got to use a backup on it. He has still not used a backup. He has a 47dj Hitachi I believe with 1.6 Xtreme firmware. He has been playing live all day and yesterday, been in and out of the Halo 3 beta and is still not banned. Everybody I know with a modded console is banned.

I think this could be significant in the realisation that its been backup disks that have been detectable and I believe that Microsoft have been collecting data for months. Another friend of mine hasn't used his xbox since January, turned it on today to see if he'd banned, sure enough, banned. Even though he hasn't been on live AT ALL since January.

Its something to think about and something to add to the information and hopefully someone can figure out what they are doing to detect it. There where simpler ways to stop this Microsoft, you can detect backups, then block them, don't block my £280 console. Now I will buy the cheaper Core system and I will never put another penny down on Xbox live other than the fee to play multiplayer with others, which in itself is a joke.

[apw100]

I haven't been banned(yet).

- "Pro" system
- MS25 w/ 5.3a firmware(registered correctly as MS-25)
- The first and only time I have flashed the firmware was 1 day before the Spring Update
- I have NEVER played a backup game on my 360. I have tested a few backed up games to see if they worked, but I have never gone past the menu. Specifically, I have never played or saved a game that was on a backup disc. This makes me wonder if 360's are being banned based on some data retrieved from their hard drive or memory cards. I dunno...
 
Has anyone with a Core system been banned?

[thewafflehouse]

Blackbolt thanks bro u agree with oyu 100 %.

Infact i can still play on xbox live i consider myself lucky.

Here is my take on the whole thing.

I agree with you that they ahve been colecting data for while. ye myself and some other freinds dont get why we arent banned but others are. The first time i playd on xbox live was april with the 4.2 firmware for my ms25.

I upgraded to the 5.3 BEFORE spring update.

so i thin all you guys who have been plkaying for  awhile got screwed and ms coudlnt wait to send a message such as powerful as when halo3 came out.

Here are the conspiricies i beleive so far.

1- They impleted the CRC check in the firmware in the spring update so it checks if u upgraded your firmware after the update ( i did mine before)

2- They are checking the disc id or something / scene backups are sometimes out early and are not retail

3- They can check the speed of the disc??? this explains why some legit consoles got booted mistakenly.

[millio007]

I have Not been Banned replacement drive ms11 or ms19 I forgot 5.2b ms28..... also have my achievements private for friends dont know if that has anything to do with it and also I buy stuff from marketplace and have alot of points LEft

Alot of THeories no definite answers

Is ANy FW Safe--- NO
stealth/non-stealth games ---no
Updated 5.3 before or after Spring Update----no
Crackdown/ halo3 beta -----no
Downloading Demos from another country not matching yours --- Technically Yes
Disconnecting the dvd drive while Booting Up and flashing (can Xbox check a bootup without dvd drive connected who knows ?But thats the smart way to do it for most people)---no
Using Somone Elses Gamesaves----TEchnically Yes



GUy down the block from me gets banned flashed about 2 months ago so he was new to it

I Had my Drive since first week of mods rls and Im still alive weird

[DogToffee]

i havnt been banned either - thank god!!

i tend to agree with you guys about it not being the firmware being detected

i only got my 360 a couple months back & only in the last couple of weeks flashed the drive

when i 1st flashed my drive it was to xtreme5.2 & then i heard about the update so i grabbed xtreme5.3 & flashed the night before my 360 updated.

yesterday (bad timing lol) i finally got my kreon drive so i made a backup of one of my games & ran it with my 360 disconnected from my network

so at this point i have a 360 with samsung drive flashed to xtreme5.3 thats never run a backup on live - hope this helps someone figure something out

i also think your right about the game discs having some kind of signature on them, obviously MS will spot somethings very wrong when 10,000 clones of a single copy of crackdown all log in - i bet bill sh1t his pants the 1st time lol

at the moment im going to carry on using live with original discs only & when i want to play backups im just going to pull my net lead

all in all a damn shame as i never got all this free backups on live stuff BUT at least im not banned (yet!)

[DuBob4432]

any firmware crc check would show a different firmware than what is oem regardless of when you did it and to what version.  i am sure if this were the case then anybody w/ a modifed firmware would be banned - and for some reason not everybody is.

maybe ms is just banning people randomly so we don't see the pattern or by what means they are doing it.  this is my guess.  but oem firmware will have one crc, 5.2 will have another, 5.3 will have another - and the only constant would be the oem firmware so they could know know what that is and the any firmware that didn't have the same crc they would know would be modified.  a very small program in C or asm could do this in less than a second...

[DogToffee]

QUOTE(DuBob4432 @ May 18 2007, 11:46 PM)

any firmware crc check would show a different firmware than what is oem regardless of when you did it and to what version.  i am sure if this were the case then anybody w/ a modifed firmware would be banned - and for some reason not everybody is.

maybe ms is just banning people randomly so we don't see the pattern or by what means they are doing it.  this is my guess.  but oem firmware will have one crc, 5.2 will have another, 5.3 will have another - and the only constant would be the oem firmware so they could know know what that is and the any firmware that didn't have the same crc they would know would be modified.  a very small program in C or asm could do this in less than a second...

i dont think anyones disputing you mate, im not as i know what you say is correct

what i thought the point of the thread was is the idea that its not the hacked firmware thats getting the bans, its the fact that MS has been able to detect people running backups & up to this point has just been logging the users that play backups for future action i.e. banning them now

anyway, im not an expert but i do know that my flashed 360 at the moment can connect to live & the only difference between me & loads that have been banned is that ive not run any backups on live

(sorry if that sounds halfway to a rant - i apologise, not my intent)

i hope someone sorts this soon as i would really like to carry on using my originals on live & just keep copied stuff for offline evaluation/play

if i do get a ban i will let you know



This post has been edited by DogToffee: May 19 2007, 01:31 AM

[insidious2]

QUOTE(Blackbolt @ May 18 2007, 08:51 PM)

I have been banned today. Damn MS. But it was my fault, I knew the risk and now I pay for it. I am just gonna buy another 360 and play my legit games with that.

Anyway, a friend of mine modded his 360 around the same time as me, but never ever got to use a backup on it. He has still not used a backup. He has a 47dj Hitachi I believe with 1.6 Xtreme firmware. He has been playing live all day and yesterday, been in and out of the Halo 3 beta and is still not banned. Everybody I know with a modded console is banned.

I think this could be significant in the realisation that its been backup disks that have been detectable and I believe that Microsoft have been collecting data for months. Another friend of mine hasn't used his xbox since January, turned it on today to see if he'd banned, sure enough, banned. Even though he hasn't been on live AT ALL since January.

Its something to think about and something to add to the information and hopefully someone can figure out what they are doing to detect it. There where simpler ways to stop this Microsoft, you can detect backups, then block them, don't block my £280 console. Now I will buy the cheaper Core system and I will never put another penny down on Xbox live other than the fee to play multiplayer with others, which in itself is a joke.

BY THAT LOGIC IT HAS EVERYTHING TO DO WITH MODIFIED FIRMWARE

[calvin940]

What you are missing is that you do not need to be on Live for it to have happened.  Aspects of what you do on the console even when not connected to Live are stored on the 360 and then when you do connect, are uploaded to the Live mothership. (example. Achievements).  

So the Fall update may have in fact been a trojan sitting on the 360 collecting specific types of data (again uncertain on how/what it actually detected), but stored that information (lets just say it could be absolutely something some like a 0 or 1 in a location that was toggled to 1 if a backup was ever detected in the console through whatever means).  Your buddy logs into Live, that 1 gets uploaded and insta-ban.

Cal

[Shaolyen]

QUOTE(insidious2 @ May 19 2007, 02:44 AM)

BY THAT LOGIC IT HAS EVERYTHING TO DO WITH MODIFIED FIRMWARE

This is a very interesting read: http://forums.maxcon...ead.php?t=62091

[hakaveli]

From what i've gathered so far, it seems that the people who didnt get banned are the ones who have NEVER PLAYED A BACKUP WHILE CONNECTED TO LIVE??

is there anyone who can say they have played backups on LIVE (especially recently) and are NOT banned? the more people that can claim this, the better. For now, this is my theory and I will not be connecting to LIVE anytime soon if that is the case because Im scared of getting hit by the banhammer.

This post has been edited by hakaveli: May 19 2007, 04:19 AM

[calvin940]

About 1 month ago I was playing my GRAW2 backup online with friends as well as a few other backups while connected to Live and I am not currently banned (as of a few hours ago when I played some more Aegis Wings).

My friend has 2 360's and we played cooperative Crackdown from start to finish on Live about a month and a half ago using our backups and neither of his 2 consoles are banned either as of like 3 hours ago.

Calvin

This post has been edited by calvin940: May 19 2007, 04:44 AM

[budmannph]

MS-25, Xtreme 5.3a(reporting as MS-25)
Flashed just before spring update.
Got halo3 with backup of crackdown(from net)
Played backup games last night and today..
Not banned yet...but assuming aventualy will be.
Z code line still showing all zero's

[walterg74]

QUOTE(DuBob4432 @ May 18 2007, 08:46 PM)

any firmware crc check would show a different firmware than what is oem regardless of when you did it and to what version.  i am sure if this were the case then anybody w/ a modifed firmware would be banned - and for some reason not everybody is.

maybe ms is just banning people randomly so we don't see the pattern or by what means they are doing it.  this is my guess.  but oem firmware will have one crc, 5.2 will have another, 5.3 will have another - and the only constant would be the oem firmware so they could know know what that is and the any firmware that didn't have the same crc they would know would be modified.  a very small program in C or asm could do this in less than a second...

You forget that your key is in the firmware... All xbox systems have different keys, and therefore the CRC would be DIFFERENT for all consoles. Except of course they could have a way of reading byte for byte, in which case, much the same as the flashing progs. do, they would go around the key and just calculate a CRC on that....  

[bodybag]

I have 3 consoles 2 are ok and 1 is banned.  All 3 of them were updated with 5.3a before the spring update.  I have ran backup games on live on all 3 of them.

But, the console that is banned I ran the kiosk demo on that machine when it was available..........

just a thought...