Apologies if I missed something/did not finish a paragraph, I got tasked with stuff to do so it is a case of press send and run.
We seem to be having a big debate so my take on things, stuff has changed in the last few weeks so some of the more long time modders I would say you are mostly correct but need to look up the new info:
Nobody that can/has said truly knows how things work (an awesome move on the part of MS- I long ago lost count of how many people who practically mod things by default were scared about modding a 360 for fear of a ban), we do however have the ability to infer why. I will also mention MS is probably not after every modder but is in fact using a cost/benefit analysis to try and pull it off and take out a chunk of modders.
Nobody truly knows how many modders are out there but looking at it I would say that the risk is low as long as you are sensible but increases dramatically if you do not play it safe, alas too few people care to understand the theory behind it all.
The fact it happens (ed?) in waves would appear to suggest one of two things:
MS stores up the data and then does it all in one big hit- see lines above for why this is good, it also means the hacking community can not determine what is what by trial and error/brute force. As most network data is encrypted and could well be sent ahead of time.....
MS has their engineers finding ways to strongly infer a flashed drive, they find it and spend a week working it up into an "attack". All evidence suggests otherwise.
*wild speculation* Were it to be I responsible for catching modders then I would make a list of criteria that could suggest such a thing and work from there probably again looking to the cost benefit analysis */wild speculation*
I thought we might see some new info with these new homebrew hacks (dump nand, play 50 suspect games, dump nand again and compare) but I have not been following it as closely as a might, many would have been interested in such data though so I am going with it has yet to be done rather than yet to be spread.
Flashing drives: no way to detect a hacked firmware or we would have all been banned (see the old xbox; you go online with a modded one (assuming you do not have/use a dual boot system) and about 15 minutes later you will probably have been banned).
There has been some speculation that flashing your 360 using the 360 itself for powering the drive is a way people have been flagged, I doubt this (not that it can happen as that is the most basic of electronics but that it does happen).
Regarding the "can't MS just try a command and see" question. No and in a deliciously ironic twist it is considered that their own 360 security prevents this; they were so hell bent on preventing a softmod style attack that they closed off a route in hardware that they could have used to tell. The main recourse they have here was a hash (not even a signature) of the drive firmware which is a sata command and as we control the responses to sata commands by virtue of flashing the drive......
Releases: This is almost certainly what gets people in trouble. Undoubtedly it is for people playing a release that does not appear as an official release.
It is true that every rip will be different (indeed that is how the scene knows when someone just repacks a p2p release) owing to various uncertainties with the laser reading process. This also has a corollary when you use it on your 360 as the 360 laser is also "troubled" by the same thing- several thousand with an identical "game" would be a tell after all. You also have to factor in dying drives/lasers (of which there are many) doing the same thing, to the third hand info from the MS insider above (which I strongly doubt) this indeed could be how you can tell the difference between a pressed and a burned disc (burned discs are practically black magic; if you looked at one under a microscope you would wonder how it all works when it looks so bad) for a given level of noise but I would still argue a dying laser/fault connection is just as likely to cause issues.
The newer hacked firmwares include some checks that will try to stop a bad rip before it starts. These are far from foolproof though but in conjunction with ABGX360 provide a good level of protection.
Region: region free (or lack of a given region lock) is region free; how many people have picked up a game as they are leaving a country in one of the massive shopping malls masquerading as an airport.
Specific games mentioned:
Halo 3, the first release from Borderlame was a bad release and this was known almost instantly. People still played it though and got taken out for their trouble.
Borderlands: the first release from Bonkers (ignoring the rar size issues repack) was a p2p repack but otherwise good (ABGX360 will verify it as good).
Forza 3: good release.
Playing online before street release date somewhere in the world (presumably with a compatible region: US locked region release is out but a PAL copy got leaked will probably still flag you). Originally it was thought to not matter and indeed it probably did not but as of the Forza 3 release they seem to have changed their stance. The other side to this is without an official/street release in hand it is markedly hard to verify a release is indeed a street release and not a low level reviewer (proper reviewers have locked consoles, less well thought of ones have stock consoles but probably have their live accounts and/or consoles flagged as reviewers).
Dates themselves: even an xbox without a live account of some form will see a measure of online network activity (not just the basic "necessary" local stuff) which will probably include hitting up a time server. Not sure where this will lead, I am just floating a hypothesis.
Banning itself: originally it was the console, you could get around it by changing your now banned key vault for one that was not banned.
Indeed those who have not done the August the 11th update can probably do the same thing now.
Naturally this required a homebrew capable console.
Nowadays it is the profile (before it was left alone) and if my memory of the Halo 3 leak is correct it is the console too, newer bans may leave the console intact (although I would put it on a watchlist). Indeed some people appear to have only been suspended (even though it says outright ban).
We seem to be having a big debate so my take on things, stuff has changed in the last few weeks so some of the more long time modders I would say you are mostly correct but need to look up the new info:
Nobody that can/has said truly knows how things work (an awesome move on the part of MS- I long ago lost count of how many people who practically mod things by default were scared about modding a 360 for fear of a ban), we do however have the ability to infer why. I will also mention MS is probably not after every modder but is in fact using a cost/benefit analysis to try and pull it off and take out a chunk of modders.
Nobody truly knows how many modders are out there but looking at it I would say that the risk is low as long as you are sensible but increases dramatically if you do not play it safe, alas too few people care to understand the theory behind it all.
The fact it happens (ed?) in waves would appear to suggest one of two things:
MS stores up the data and then does it all in one big hit- see lines above for why this is good, it also means the hacking community can not determine what is what by trial and error/brute force. As most network data is encrypted and could well be sent ahead of time.....
MS has their engineers finding ways to strongly infer a flashed drive, they find it and spend a week working it up into an "attack". All evidence suggests otherwise.
*wild speculation* Were it to be I responsible for catching modders then I would make a list of criteria that could suggest such a thing and work from there probably again looking to the cost benefit analysis */wild speculation*
I thought we might see some new info with these new homebrew hacks (dump nand, play 50 suspect games, dump nand again and compare) but I have not been following it as closely as a might, many would have been interested in such data though so I am going with it has yet to be done rather than yet to be spread.
Flashing drives: no way to detect a hacked firmware or we would have all been banned (see the old xbox; you go online with a modded one (assuming you do not have/use a dual boot system) and about 15 minutes later you will probably have been banned).
There has been some speculation that flashing your 360 using the 360 itself for powering the drive is a way people have been flagged, I doubt this (not that it can happen as that is the most basic of electronics but that it does happen).
Regarding the "can't MS just try a command and see" question. No and in a deliciously ironic twist it is considered that their own 360 security prevents this; they were so hell bent on preventing a softmod style attack that they closed off a route in hardware that they could have used to tell. The main recourse they have here was a hash (not even a signature) of the drive firmware which is a sata command and as we control the responses to sata commands by virtue of flashing the drive......
Releases: This is almost certainly what gets people in trouble. Undoubtedly it is for people playing a release that does not appear as an official release.
It is true that every rip will be different (indeed that is how the scene knows when someone just repacks a p2p release) owing to various uncertainties with the laser reading process. This also has a corollary when you use it on your 360 as the 360 laser is also "troubled" by the same thing- several thousand with an identical "game" would be a tell after all. You also have to factor in dying drives/lasers (of which there are many) doing the same thing, to the third hand info from the MS insider above (which I strongly doubt) this indeed could be how you can tell the difference between a pressed and a burned disc (burned discs are practically black magic; if you looked at one under a microscope you would wonder how it all works when it looks so bad) for a given level of noise but I would still argue a dying laser/fault connection is just as likely to cause issues.
The newer hacked firmwares include some checks that will try to stop a bad rip before it starts. These are far from foolproof though but in conjunction with ABGX360 provide a good level of protection.
Region: region free (or lack of a given region lock) is region free; how many people have picked up a game as they are leaving a country in one of the massive shopping malls masquerading as an airport.
Specific games mentioned:
Halo 3, the first release from Borderlame was a bad release and this was known almost instantly. People still played it though and got taken out for their trouble.
Borderlands: the first release from Bonkers (ignoring the rar size issues repack) was a p2p repack but otherwise good (ABGX360 will verify it as good).
Forza 3: good release.
Playing online before street release date somewhere in the world (presumably with a compatible region: US locked region release is out but a PAL copy got leaked will probably still flag you). Originally it was thought to not matter and indeed it probably did not but as of the Forza 3 release they seem to have changed their stance. The other side to this is without an official/street release in hand it is markedly hard to verify a release is indeed a street release and not a low level reviewer (proper reviewers have locked consoles, less well thought of ones have stock consoles but probably have their live accounts and/or consoles flagged as reviewers).
Dates themselves: even an xbox without a live account of some form will see a measure of online network activity (not just the basic "necessary" local stuff) which will probably include hitting up a time server. Not sure where this will lead, I am just floating a hypothesis.
Banning itself: originally it was the console, you could get around it by changing your now banned key vault for one that was not banned.
Indeed those who have not done the August the 11th update can probably do the same thing now.
Naturally this required a homebrew capable console.
Nowadays it is the profile (before it was left alone) and if my memory of the Halo 3 leak is correct it is the console too, newer bans may leave the console intact (although I would put it on a watchlist). Indeed some people appear to have only been suspended (even though it says outright ban).
First try to connect with xbox live, if its still possible then your console is good, just create a new live account.
Otherwise you have to buy a new 360, i got the arcade when i was banned and i just used my old harddrive and live account to play again.
This is the risk you take with playing copies on live
Otherwise you have to buy a new 360, i got the arcade when i was banned and i just used my old harddrive and live account to play again.
This is the risk you take with playing copies on live
Is it really worth it to play a game a few weeks early? The possibility of getting caught goes up ten-fold.
People that get caught with pirated software and only receive a LIVE ban should consider themselves lucky. MS has the resources, and can take much nastier leagal action against them. Of course I wish this on no one, but people should realize that this is a possibility.
People that get caught with pirated software and only receive a LIVE ban should consider themselves lucky. MS has the resources, and can take much nastier leagal action against them. Of course I wish this on no one, but people should realize that this is a possibility.
I just got banned, and i have never played a game early.
looks like MS is dropping the hammer.
good luck to everyone
looks like MS is dropping the hammer.
good luck to everyone
Thanks Mr. One Post / Joined Today. I'd love to get some more attendible sources, thanks.Gatecrasher3 said:
I do believe that with some of the latest iXtreme firmwares, Microsoft has virtually no way to distinguish a modded 360 anymore. I'm not going into the details of how iXtreme firmwares work, because that would be a long and useless digression, and I myself only know the details in a mostly sketchy way.
Otherwise why should they just ban the accounts? Because people didn't listen to them so they got fed with banning consoles? Ha. This one's funny. A lot of people bought a new 360 just to play on Live again. MS would've just lost a good source of money that way.
Because they'd get their ass sued if they'd also ban legit consoles (as they're now mostly undistinguishable?) in a new ban-wave? Most likely.
Read the Kotaku article well. The Microsoft chief of police Stephen Toulouse said "Don't worry folks, anyone who bought a copy early is ok. In general, if you got a receipt, play away". How could a receipt be important to them? Simple. To unban legit early copies who could get caught in the account bannings. With account bannings they know the reason and what you were playing. If you show them a receipt, they can safely assume that you just got a legit copy and unban you, in the case.
Does this means that if you've got a recent iXtreme and well stealthed copies you're not bannable? Very possible.
As for the OP, just format your HD, and you should be fine. Even just creating a new Gamertag should suffice. If you're paranoic, just get a new HD.
EDIT: My theory just went to ****: http://gbatemp.net/index.php?showtopic=188345
I think M$ is a joke when it comes to online since they ban modded consoles and make you pay for things that Sony and Nintendo give for free...lenselijer said:First try to connect with xbox live, if its still possible then your console is good, just create a new live account.
Otherwise you have to buy a new 360, i got the arcade when i was banned and i just used my old harddrive and live account to play again.
This is the risk you take with playing copies on liveI wouldn't buy another 360 and support M$. And modding and copies are still worth it despite that...
QUOTE(quepaso @ Oct 22 2009, 11:23 PM) Nintendos online setup, WFC, is basically 2 cups and some string compared to PSN and XBL. I doubt they even have the manpower to even investigate everything that happens on nintendos network since they live by a mantra of less employees doing more for the company. MS and Sony have teams of people monitoring their networks all the time. Its why nintendo is a joke when it comes to online.
mpg187 said:
Depends, fee for LIVE covers everything from getting content on it to partners to the network structure itself etc, i've used PSN and nintendo WFC is literally 2 plastic cups and a piece of string, carrier pigeon would be faster and more reliable. PSN is usable but lacks the polish of LIVE.
Microsofts approach is for LIVE to be for everyone and to be integrated into games and such.
Sonys approach is that PSN is there and served as it is, theres because it needs to be to keep up.
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mpg187 said:
Of course lol. You get free content from time to time but arcade games and stuff are not free.
If you have to pay on top of your subscription then it does not cover getting content.QUOTE said:
If said content is free and not available to non-paying members, such as early demo access, or crap like 1 vs 100, then yes, it is covered.
If it's not available to non-paying members then it's not free.
But anyways, so some stuff is covered by the fee ("free" in the fact you don't pay extra, but not free because you have to pay the fee) but most isn't?
But anyways, so some stuff is covered by the fee ("free" in the fact you don't pay extra, but not free because you have to pay the fee) but most isn't?
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