Old Game Live Update Exploit? Options

[surfer_boi]

sorry if this has already been said but i couldnt find anything on it, but when you insert an old xbox game such as halo 2, and try to get on live, it says it needs an update. it then launches what looks to be the xbox dash (im guessing off of the disc itself) and then after the update it reloads the game.

i was wandering if it is possible to exploit this in any way to get a linux style loader running. probably not and i reckon im just talking a load of C**p but hey, just thought id say

[NoFace]

on the contrary, that idea actually sounds like it might work. If we can get it to the xbox dash, a linux loader would be an approproit method. I was also thinking, what if we got it to launch the dash from a game disk, then we might be able to do something.

Are there any xbox games that link to a file on the hard drive? If there was, such as update.xbe or something, we could use our hdd editing and edit the xbe. What would stop it from running from a xbox 1 game disk?

This post has been edited by NoFace: Feb 25 2006, 06:58 PM

[CattyKid]

Well, it's a good thought but it's been discussed for a while now. The Hypervisor won't allow the running of any unsigned code, which is what is in the hacked gamesave/Linux Loader.

[PedrosPad]

sorry if this has already been said but i couldnt find anything on it, but when you insert an old xbox game such as halo 2, and try to get on live, it says it needs an update. it then launches what looks to be the xbox dash (im guessing off of the disc itself) and then after the update it reloads the game.

That's actually quite interesting.

The XBOX1 Dashboard fonts ship pre-installed on the X360 HDD. I was wondering what actually used them.

On the XBOX1, these fonts never appeared on the game media. Any updaters that were present on the XBOX1 game media load their fonts from the XBOX1's HDD. Now I see why they're necessary on the X360 HDD.

This post has been edited by PedrosPad: Feb 25 2006, 11:38 PM

[theone31]

but when u load a old xbox game does'nt it load the xbox emulator.
would this not be the same as loading the spliter cell save game thing that we allready know wont work

[ssj4android]

Can you go to the Xbox 1 dashboard from a BC game? I know games could call the dashboard if there's not enough space, or if they need to set up a live account or something. What happens when you press "Create a New Account" in Halo 2? Or are there any games that let you get into the memory managment without the HDD being full?

[PedrosPad]

Can you go to the Xbox 1 dashboard from a BC game? I know games could call the dashboard if there's not enough space, or if they need to set up a live account or something. What happens when you press "Create a New Account" in Halo 2? Or are there any games that let you get into the memory managment without the HDD being full?

I’m pretty certain the XBOX1 Dashboard isn’t present on the X360 HDD – so what happens is a fair question.

The XBOX1 titles used an API along the lines of XLaunchDashboard() – which takes a launch reason as one of its parameters. IIRC one of them was “memory management” – so it knew to launch the dashboard, and drop you in at the memory management screen.

Using the X360 HDD injection tools it should be possible to force fill up the X360 HDD (simply ripping tunes will probably only fill to a lower artificial limit!). I suspect that the XBOX1 API that used to throw you to the XBOX1's memory management dashboard screen, will be redirected to throw you to the X360 Dash under backwards compatibility.


This post has been edited by PedrosPad: Feb 27 2006, 10:14 AM

[bowser22]

I hope this thread doesnt drag on because there wont be an exploit like that unless we unlock the hypervisor

[PedrosPad]

I hope this thread doesnt drag on because there wont be an exploit like that unless we unlock the hypervisor

It's not known that the X360 hypervisor is a barrier to getting XBOX1 homebrew running under the backward compatibility emulator!

This post has been edited by PedrosPad: Feb 27 2006, 03:23 PM

[jizmo]

It's not known that the X360 hypervisor is a barrier to getting XBOX1 homebrew running under the backward compatibility emulator!

Why would an emulator need to use x360's hypervisor, isn't emulator a hypervisor in itself? It's an emulated system running within a program. Doing a hack within an emulator is as much a threat to the system as getting homebrew running in a NES emulator on a PC.

Hypervisor might be guarding the emulator itself, but not the stuff that's run in it. So I wouldn't call it quits yet. Emulator itself might do it tho.

Which reminds me, has anyone else found it odd that in some Xbox titles with game demos in them BC allows to run the demo-selection menu, which is a separate program, but refuses to load the actual demos because of the BC restrictions? There must be some sort of category where these demo loaders fall into, I'm pretty sure that BC team didn't intentionally code in all these OXM etc discs to work. Also some not-listed games have been reported to work, which is a bit odd as well.

They might not be listing all the stuff that's allowed to run somewhere, but they aren't definitely listing all the stuff that's NOT allowed to run either.

This post has been edited by jizmo: Feb 27 2006, 04:49 PM

[PedrosPad]

It's not known that the X360 hypervisor is a barrier to getting XBOX1 homebrew running under the backward compatibility emulator!

Why would an emulator need to use x360's hypervisor, isn't emulator a hypervisor in itself? It's an emulated system running within a program. Doing a hack within an emulator is as much a threat to the system as getting homebrew running in a NES emulator on a PC.

Hypervisor might be guarding the emulator itself, but not the stuff that's run in it. So I wouldn't call it quits yet.

Err, Isn't that exactly what I said.

Which reminds me, has anyone else found it odd that in some Xbox titles with game demos in them BC allows to run the demo-selection menu, which is a separate program, but refuses to load the actual demos because of the BC restrictions? There must be some sort of category where these demo loaders fall into, I'm pretty sure that BC team didn't intentionally code in all these OXM etc discs to work. Also some not-listed games have been reported to work, which is a bit odd as well.

Were going off topic here but....

I suspect you're right about categories. I think the XDK version the XBEs were built with, in conjunction with what XDK libraries the XBE actually uses contribute to the categorization. (The OXM demo launcher is very old, thin, unsophisticated, and built with an early XDK, the game demos it launches are often build with newer XDKs!)

M$ has every xbe. They probably wrote a tool to scan the XBEs for XDK version, libraries utilized (these details are exposed in the XBE file format), and possibly whether any funny code (such as procedural textures, direct hardware access, etc.) exists in them (harder!).

As soon as they’re confident a specific XDK release of a library is supported by BC, all those titles in that category are cleared for retest on X360. Those that do contain 'advanced code ' probably fail, and are removed from the BC list (to be inspected when time allows). As is evident here:

The original list was composed of 213 games and was unveiled on November 11, 2005 on the Xbox.com website; however, games have been subsequently removed due to bugs. The following 13 games have been removed from the list: Catwoman, Codename: Kids Next Door, Curse: The Eye of Isis, NBA LIVE 2003, Sid Meier’s Pirates, Star Wars: Clone Wars, Blinx 2, FIFA World Cup 2002, Grabbed by the Ghoulies, Legends of Wrestling, Mortal Kombat: Deception, and Rugby 2005.

Nobody, like nobody, put effort into getting Barbie’s Horse Adventure working, but it’s on the BC list!

That’s how I’d have done it in order to get the widest BC support out there the shortest timeframe.

This post has been edited by PedrosPad: Feb 27 2006, 07:18 PM

[jizmo]

Err, Isn't that exactly what I said.

I was just backing you up there, man

Good take on the compatibility thing. This is probably exactly what they've done. There's definately a list of blocked games that could work, but are disabled intentionally - like older versions of sports games.

Getting control of the Xbox emulation side is worth more than most people think. It might be the only way to run any real homebrew for a long, long time.

This post has been edited by jizmo: Feb 27 2006, 08:22 PM

[jizmo]

Also, I'm pretty confident that the OS is written in much different fashion to handle all the system calls and that the emulation doesn't contain the original dashboard (can't see any reason why it should).

[PedrosPad]

There's definately a list of blocked games that could work, but are disabled intentionally - like older versions of sports games.

Although checking if an XBE’s libraries are supported by BC could happen on the X360 console itself, it’s more practical (and provides greater control) if all the querying of the XBEs happens back at M$, and the X360 BC updates simply amend a list of supported XBE title IDs in the X360’s backwards compatibility database (the TDBX\Tdbx.db file on the X360 HDD).

(At >150MBs the TDBX\Tdbx.db file obviously contains more than just the XBE title IDs! Given that length, it probably contains necessary patches/detours to specific XBE libraries that are applied between the emulator loading the XBE, and it beginning execution.)


This post has been edited by PedrosPad: Feb 28 2006, 11:11 AM

[jizmo]

(At >150MBs the TDBX\Tdbx.db file obviously contains more than just the XBE title IDs! Given that length, it probably contains necessary patches/detours to specific XBE libraries that are applied between the emulator loading the XBE, and it beginning execution.)

Too bad that I've installed both BC updates already, it would be educational to install both november and december updates and use a hex editor to see what's changed after each update.

After all, the update files are just 3mb each, much less than that 150Mb Tdbx.db file.

This post has been edited by jizmo: Feb 28 2006, 02:00 PM