Yes, Bunnie's book is probably your best bet, as well as scouring the main X-S web page's news archives.
One thing to rmeember is that the Xbox was launched in November of 2001, but not publicly 'cracked' until March-May of 2002. While Bunnie's research had a lot to do with all of that, there were several other groups making progress in parallel to his work.
AFAIK, M$ mentioned none of their mechanisms before or after it was 'cracked'
As far as flaws go, Bunnie's book will detail them, but primarily it involved:
1) Using a "familiar" platform - essentially a PC - as the basis for the system
2) Using an easily cracked encryption and hashing algorithm for the BIOS security mechanism
3) Leaving a handy-dandy LPC connection on the motherboard to exploit.
4) Hmmmm... that's really it.
M$ did very well on the game disc security, though... AFAIK, nobody has recreated an original Xbox game disc. Nobody has cracked the private 2048-bit signature key, either, which, if not beaten by removing the check in the BIOS, is extremely effective.
I think the biggest lesson, though, is that "piracy" (or in our cases, a desire to develop outside of the mainstream) is a bit of a quandry - I wonder how popular the Xobx might have been WITHOUT it being cracked.
The main thing I remind people about "piracy" is that the most pirated consoles in the world, the Playstation and the PS2 are also the most widely successful and profitable. The Playstation is STILL going strong - nobody says "I'm not going to publish a game for the Xbox because some Triad outfit in HK is going to sell knockoffs of the game and I'll lose tons of money". The secondary market sometimes makes up for so-called "losses" as a result of the most avid pirate. Most "Pirates" I know have more original games than their "honest" counterparts, anyway.
Author
Topic: Xbox High Level Piracy Timeline Info (Read 48 times)