Xbox 360 finally hacked to run Linux?
by Dustin Burg 
{ Jan 1st 2007 at 3:15AM }
It looks like someone may have finally hacked the 360 to run Linux. Xbox-Scene is reporting that during the German 23C3 Hacker Congress an anonymous presenter came on stage during an "open mic" type session. With 360 in hand, he (or she) proceeds to load King Kong and fiddles around for a minute or two. Then, on the screen appears the Linux penguin and the old Mac logo with the words "Coming soon...". Could this finally be confirmation that the volatile King Kong shaders were exploited and are the key to hacking the 360's OS? Only time will tell, but someone should have warned that anonymous hacker that this little experiment voided his 360's warranty ... joke's on him!
[Thanks, BlueStar]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
E.J. @ Jan 1st 2007 4:10AM
Happy New Year, Fanboy Towers!
Ctrl Alt D L33t @ Jan 1st 2007 4:20AM
wow what a waste of time..sadly thats not even a boot screen.
Brian James @ Jan 1st 2007 4:55AM
Waste of time? More like progress.
If this person was able to execute any sort of code, this is a huge achievement.
honz12 @ Jan 1st 2007 4:50AM
Who cares!
Ankalagon @ Jan 1st 2007 6:13AM
Seems to be a fake cause the CCC never mentioned anything. Instead they gave credits to MS for the underlying security hypervisor.
https://events.congress.ccc.de/congress/2006/Fahrplan/events/1606.en.html
http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/83031/ (german)
KineticOnline @ Jan 1st 2007 6:36AM
They really need to show what hes going (i.e not under/behind a desk).
I can make a similar video at home with something that cost me £10. Its called a KVM switch, one press of a button and my screen goes from 360 to PC.
Ankalagon @ Jan 1st 2007 7:07AM
Working Link (they changed the address from hhtps to http)
http://events.ccc.de/congress/2006/Fahrplan/events/1606.en.html
Talus @ Jan 1st 2007 7:15AM
King Kong 360 game sales are gonna go through the roof...
hppymnky @ Jan 1st 2007 7:47AM
WORST. COMMENTARY. EVER.
the suspense is killing me
What The Geek @ Jan 1st 2007 8:08AM
Looks fake.... he went right from the game to... what? a screensaver? Come on... don't believe everything you see on the internet.
I'm sure linux will happen on the 360 sooner or later. There's a very dedicated open source community that will see to it. This, however, was most likely a piece of video trickery.
Rob Rawlins @ Jan 1st 2007 8:15AM
Q: How many linux monkeys does it take to plug in an xbox 360?
J.Goodwin @ Jan 1st 2007 8:46AM
Given that it's well known that you can "hack" the kiosk demo to play WMV files (this was only useful in the days before you could just stream WMV to the system from WMP11)...
Seems to me like this is old hat. VERY OLD HAT.
ic0n7 @ Jan 1st 2007 10:27AM
if this is real well do to the guy but tbh i dont think it is and running the coming soon thing is just point less
o yer and how long did they take to plug in the 360
Joe @ Jan 1st 2007 10:48AM
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Could I just point out 2 things.
That isn't the "old" Mac logo. It is in fact the Finder logo of the current Mac OS X.
Secondly most of the people at the hacking convention seem to be using Apple notebook computers, including the anonymous presenter who is using a 12" PowerBook. Clearly a sign that people who know their stuff about computing security, pick Macs as they have no viruses and they're extremely secure.
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sturla @ Jan 7th 2007 12:08PM
Remeber that running linux on the first xbox was made possible by exploiting a weakness in the savegame structure of some 007 game (an in deed other games/dashboard later). So the first booting of linux we saw was actually made though the game. Loading a savegame, which in turn crashed and made allowed the unsigned code to be run.
I'm not sure this is the case with the 360, but the first xbox had a security system that prevented code to be called unless it was from a "safe" caller, in what is called the chain of trust. One trusted component calls the other (instanciated by the firmware). The trick is, in other words to trick something into calling unsafe code. For instance by exploting bugs in games, such as illustrated above.
GhostDoggy @ Jan 1st 2007 1:10PM
Hey, I have five computers in my home all more easily capable of running Linux 'if I wanted to'. If i wanted another computer, I could have gotten one for $299.
Matt @ Jan 1st 2007 2:00PM
Looked fake to me.
Why did it go from the start screen of king kong, to a blank screen? Then it took him 10 minutes. Also, where was the OS stores?
Kamizar @ Jan 1st 2007 2:52PM
"Clearly a sign that people who know their stuff about computing security, pick Macs as they have no viruses and they're extremely secure."
Because Macs aren't as popular as PC's and nobody wants to code for it...
drewdrakes @ Jan 1st 2007 3:26PM
"Because Macs aren't as popular as PC's and nobody wants to code for it..."
Haha, I love you for saying that. My thoughts exactly. If they're so die-hard mac fans why arent they trying to run OSX on the 360?
sugrhigh @ Jan 1st 2007 4:48PM
Could be just a small XNA app...
Just copied the whole King Kong loading screen then a simple "bouncing ball" screensaver type app... ive done like 12 in XNA in my testing of collision detection!
they never show a main menu, they never DO anything that we can see!
my call is its a fake because you dont see them put in a cd, you dont see the boot screen, you dont see anything except what they want you to! on top of that, they dont show you that the laptop is connected to the xbox by ANY means! wireless!? no! and whats the little circuit board do? if anything, thatd be the bridge to the laptop but i dont think so! total crap this one!
Milkman @ Jan 1st 2007 5:03PM
The reason there aren't viruses for Macs is because why would a hacker/cracker waste their time trying to foil 100 machines when they could foil 1,000,000 machines.
The Ninja @ Jan 1st 2007 7:27PM
Believe me this is real check out my website and click Xbox 360 to view the How to , Its simple
Geedo @ Jan 2nd 2007 2:32AM
@ 14.
I'm just as happy to see Mac's out on display, and being used by the 'nerds'.
But they could just as easily be running linux on them rather than OS X!
ps. i am an apple fanboy, just thought it was worth pointing this out.
Kamizar @ Jan 1st 2007 9:08PM
"Believe me this is real check out my website and click Xbox 360 to view the How to , Its simple"
One problem, you're lying, I went to your site, and explored, theres nothing there for it...
cybereality @ Feb 6th 2007 11:44AM
Totally bogus. Dude gets a bouncing bitmap on screen and somehow that proves he can boot linux. Give me a break.
Also the video cuts out for like 30 seconds. More than enough time to switch the connection to the projector. Most likely he just stored a HD video clip on the Xbox HDD and loaded it up real quick when the connection was lost. Either that, or its just a simple XNA demo I could write in 5 minutes. What a n00b.
Larry Who @ Feb 11th 2007 10:57AM
For starters, Mac OS X will only run on Mac hardware and it's not open source, that's why you'll never see it running on anything but a Mac. The reasons there aren't viruses and spyware for the Mac are the same that there are no viruses and spyware for Linux. Because (unlike Windows) they don't decide whether a fiel is executable or not based on the last three letters of the file name (it's called a permissions based file system). Lastly, if there are really only 100 Macs running out there (aside from this one that I'm using now) please tell me why Apple stock trades for more than twice the amount that M$ stock trades for. Same old Pro-Windows and Anti-Mac FUD, people need to get a clue before they randomly rehash the same old FUD that's been proven wrong time and time again.