Print

[snake3]

when you drill it severs the write protect wire from the ground wire allowing unlock of the drive, it's really a common sense hack, Gerimia had to de-cap a lot of chips to find the location of the wire though and I'm sure finding the unlock command was no picnic either.

[tullyfish]

Talented electrical engineers created the protection.  Talented electrical engineers reverse engineer to understand what they did and how to circumvent it.

It is like with drive firmware.  C4E is not the only programmer who is an expert on 360 drive firmware - it is just that most of the other experts work for MS

Hacker is not really a full time job for most people.  I imagine a lot of talented coders who work in security spend their off ours trying to crack the work of their peers.

[DodgeM4s]

I find it fascinating that people can do this kind of stuff.

[Datenshiz]

It is fascinating but it ain't magic. The knowledge can be obtained

Its like math..most people are just happy that it works. But once you truly understand it, you begin to see the beauty in solutions and arguments. But getting there takes a long time(for most).

Having knowledge in the field Gerimia "knew" if there was A then there must be B, he searched and removed B. =)

[tullyfish]

Anything can look like magic if you do not understand it (exactly know stage magic works).

Don't get me wrong - plenty of very talented ppl in the scene -but for example, when we were renovating our current house the things a talented stone mason can do with stone, splitting it at just the right place to fit each stone together seamlessly - and the way the master carpenter jointed the cabinets so tight they didn't even need glue and brought the grain out of previously ordinary looking wood.  Watching talented ppl work in their specialist field is always impressive.