Has anyone looked into the Xbox live protocol? This seems too obvious that this would already have been attempted, but I couldn't find anything on it so I assume there is a reason.

I think it would be great if people could set up their own Xbox Live servers, so they could play multiplayer with their friends without having to pay MS more money for a subscription. I was thinking along the lines of a man-in-the-middle style deal, where a PC computer would reroute the Xbox Live traffic to an alternate Live server, or possibly even be the live server.

I'll take a stab and assume Xbox Live communications are encrypted, so I realize that would be a hurdle... But couldn't the private key for encryption be extracted from the game XBE? or maybe hack the game XBE to not encrypt the communcations. Or is the key somewhere else?

I admit I haven't looked into any of this myself. It was just an idea.

I think the fact that most developers enjoy the live service they'd prefer to not do it.

So I doubt you'd get much help.

I myself prefer the idea of Live being for the most part untainted.

There are still many countries without Live service. I for one would welcome it

There are solutions to this in XLink and XBConnect and other such tunnelling apps.

That would be great! I beleive that the tunneling apps are doing this job, but this would be cool none the less. There are some games that seem easily hackable and that it would be easy to edit maps for such games. We could then just load up the server and could get the map through the live update thing. I know this sounds kinda stupid if you think about it cuz you could just ftp it, but i mean, your friends and other people who would connect to your alternate live server could d/l'ed the map. I would like to see this done. This would be very cool and I'm sure many people would be playing around with it.

Hey awesome! I didn't think to look under Tunnelling software. Although system link is not quite Live. As Mike pointed out, having a Live server would have some advantages over system link.

I was also thinking maybe network traffic could be used to exploit the xbox system, and get the same effect the 007 hack has.

tunneling only allows system link...and some have voiec.

but being able to use the live options ingame (integrated) would be nice....but you probably SHOULD just get live.

Well basically Bo-XLink is as close as you'll get to an integrated GUI. I don't see any hacking of Live or much connecting to it coming soon and I don't particularly want to.

There are other solutions, so if you're not willing to buy another subscription or whatever, then you have to accept the other ways I guess.

Yeah, I barely play live, more interested in hacking it. I have an idea, some dedicated person could run a free live server. It would be exactly like live and have the exact same content, just be FREE!!! That would be the best. Sure, a lot of n00bs wouldn't be able to get to it, but if everyone just spreads the word, maybe they could. This would really be great. You said Wishi that you don't particularly want to do it, but maybe if you tell some of your developer buddies, they could really become interested and may want to do this.

OOPS, when i said hacking it, i meant hacking and messing around with the xbox.

"Hacking" the Live! service is nearly impossible because it is based on IPSEC .. Also, it uses what appears to be a very sophisticated challenge -> authenticate security system ..

Just faking a sucessful login would be almost impossible..

Cheers

TheDaddy

Either pay for Live or use XLink/XBConnect. Live hacking ain't/shouldn't happen anytime soon.

Oh, I do currently have a Live subscription... but cannot use it anymore as my modchip does not have a switch, and the only HDD I had available to put in my xbox is not lockable. Hence I can no longer go on Live. I do plan on putting a switch in, but there's not much motivation to get my ass in gear and do it since the HDD is still limiting me from playing online. I suppose I can put the original HDD back in there if I really want to get back on Live... but then that limits me from the other things I could do with my xbox.

That would really be cool though... it would be like a mirror of live, but free! everyone would want to try it and would love it. I'm not exactly a programmer, but close and i have a good knowledge of computers so i can't really make the program and i can't imagine how much work would likely go into it, so yeah... Some say pointless, I say that i would be really nice. You could have custom maps on free live. You could do so much! Oh well... whatever. I just think it would be cool.

I would rather see an XBOX app connect to Xlink or XBconnect so I don't have to use my computer to log in and play.

I personally don't think live is that great and I don't think people want Xbox hacking, game cracking, cheat finding assholes on there anyway.

So many online/multiplayer PC games get ruined from cheating.

Well, BoXLink is an app coming out soon which, while it still requires a PC to run the application in the background for routing traffic etc. can be controlled completely from Xbox so you can view/create rooms, enter games all from the Xbox.

There's currently alpha builds out (check out #xbox-link) but obviously there's still a lot to be done, which is why they're not called final

Kick ass


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oh

I agree, online games get ruined by cheaters. I don't even see why a person would bother cheating as it makes the game no fun with no challenge. But anyways, that doesn't have much relevance to coming up with a free Live service. If ppl are cheating on free Live they could probably also cheat over system link. And actually, if the live service _is_ disected, we may find that the live server is able to verify the game executable (and other files) and make sure it is the original game... then you could ensure there is no cheating.

But now that I see what is already available, it doesn't make too much sense to go through all the trouble of examining the Live traffic, etc, just so you can play online multiplayer games. Although I still think it would be interesting to see it happen. And as it was already said, a Live service would have more features/functionality than just system link. I do think it would be very difficult though.

I am a programmer and have a little experience in reverse engineering, so if anyone is interested, I am willing to help. Although once school starts again in september, I'm going to be 110% busy with that... but will still be able to help occationally.

my question is wouldnt whomever running the main server have to get the actual program that runs on the xbox live servers?

does anyone know how it works no guesses but how it REALLY works ?

if that is the case the leaked program and editing the xbox live to connect to another ip
would be all you need.......right?

Why do you have to fake a login? Could you describe what is necessary technically for someone to host their own LIVE server? The live server must be uniform somehow via the xbox or game software. How else will everyone else get on the same LIVE service if its not the same network/ip to connect to. Can't you change this somehow to direct it to your live server?

There is a lot of discussion on how it is pretty impossible to fake a login to MS's live. Explain to me the things in our way of hosting our OWN LIVE server please. Else, point me somewhere I can learn about this.

Thank you.

Hi,

Xlink Kai is an alternative for online gaming.

regards.

Yes, I know.



bump

Maybe a good starting point would be the xdk help.
The xbox networking is fully integrated in the kernel.
You even have a couple of example sources as far as I remember.
You won't find much information on the server site, since Microsoft had some test sites you could use to test your online gaming experience. (as registered game developper)
Also keep in mind that a server setup needs a huge bandwith. You probably can't run it on your home pc with your provider bandwidth. You might be able to use it on a local Lan. (For a xbox lan party)

regards.

I appreciate the informative reply obcd!

What's the difference in the bandwidth needed to host a 16 player game on xbox live (if you were the xbox live server) vs. a 16 player system link game on xlink kai. The point I'm getting at is that if the bandwidth needed to be a server on xbox live is similar to being a host via system link... well this is done everyday and many people don't think this is an issue.
Also, I'm sure I'm not the first one who has thought of having a live server. If this is somewhat feasible, I'd sure like to start working on it. Do you have any idea why no one else has attempted this (not that I'm aware of...) Since I haven't seen anyone else do this.. I'm assuming there are some setbacks, could you share with me any insight that would prevent a project like this?(to the best of your knowledge)
I don't want to have to start and then later discover that I can't continue because of reason A or reason B. It would be nice if I could find out beforehand.

-thanks

I am afraid I can't be very helpfull with that.
If something hasn't been done, or if you can't find attempts to do something in the forum, than, usually, it is extremely difficult or impossible to do it. (In case of the xbox 1)
Even if you can do it, you are pretty much on your own.
Unless you find others willing to help coding with it, you will need to solve every problem you run into yourself. This can be very fustrating.
I assume that the underlying protocol about how the xbox connects to the live server isn't documented since it is part of the xbox kernel. As they use secure sockets, you can't just monitor the traffic either...

regards.

Redirection is trivial if you have a router capable of running iptables. Faking a cryptographically signed auth is not.



If IPsec is in play then it'll be pretty difficult. It depends on the authentication structure. Normally you can do a man-in-the-middle attack, but Live probably implements authentication, which means that you'll need some way of altering/replacing the public key stored on the Xbox with the key for your own server. Expect to do a lot of network protocol dissection to figure out the auth system.

If you do manage to get it to authenticate, all you need to do is sniff some existing live sessions and dissect the protocol.



The live servers just act as a master server. All hosting is done by the users' Xbox - bandwidth should be trivial, assuming you can crack the authentication, which like I said before is very difficult.

Why do I have to crack the authen, only if I want to host my own xbox live server exactly as mic-wosoft does. Rather, I'd say change the xbox live API. After all, its in these functions that say things need to authenticated anyways... I don't think game software writes its own authentication.. it just uses the xbox built in xbox live API. Change the API and keep the same function names.. and you can do whatever you want... right?