Originally posted by scorpNZ:

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Seems i can't read or have extremely piss poor comprehension no where do i see any such OFFICIAL statement from microsoft or in any links that even remotely mentions anything related to the article unless they sell ms products & want to rid themselves of old stock

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Originally posted by cee43ja1:

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one thing that has me thinking; doesn't the official HDD have a unique serial? so if the hddss.bin is ripped from it, there would be a bunch of the same ones on LIVE. i think microsoft wanted to wait before the release of the 250gig to do this.

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Originally posted by bhetrick:

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That's it exactly. There's a ton of hdd's using the same ss.bin

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Originally posted by bhetrick:

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Originally posted by scorpNZ:

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Seems i can't read or have extremely piss poor comprehension no where do i see any such OFFICIAL statement from microsoft or in any links that even remotely mentions anything related to the article unless they sell ms products & want to rid themselves of old stock

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Huh?

I'm assuming you don't know who Major Nelson is. He's the programming director for xbox live.

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Originally posted by cee43ja1:

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Originally posted by bhetrick:

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That's it exactly. There's a ton of hdd's using the same ss.bin

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then why only now are they stopping it?

they really don't know how to play their cards right.

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Originally posted by qwert99:

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So if they are in fact banning HDDs based on the SS file, shouldn't it be a simple matter of merely creating a unique SS file for each HDD? MS may have a huge database of every HDD SS ever created, but I imagine the process is more like a CD key system for a PC application where the number is merely checked against some algorithm to determine if it looks legit or not. If that is the case, all that would need to be done is to figure that algorithm out (as CD key generator authors do all the time) and integrate that into one of the HDD hacking programs to automatically generate a unique serial each time.

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Originally posted by qwert99:

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Sorry, I am not totally versed in the current state of homebrew. Figuring out the algo to the HDD's serial numbers is what is standing in the way of homebrew?

I am no crytologist, but I imagine that with such a massive amount of information available (all of the serials), pretty much all that is required is to plug as many of those numbers as possible into a database and start crunching numbers. It also seems to me that it simply hasn't been tried yet since there hasn't been a reason to. Sort of like why a scene group wouldn't bother creating a CD key gen for a PC app that merely asked for an 'optional' CD key.

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Originally posted by qwert99:

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From what I understand, the reason homebrew is having a difficult go of it on the 360 is because running unsigned code on the 360 is proving to be pretty tough. I don't think the situation with the serials of HDDs and the situation with running unsigned code on the 360 are really very similar at all. That's a bit like saying if we could only figure out how to crack the HDD serial algo, we could then play games directly from the HDD without a DVD. The conclusion doesn't follow the premise.

But there is a massive amount of data, just waiting to be collected. Every person with a 360 and a HDD has a unique serial, so all one would need to do is start collecting that data in whatever way. They could solicit volunteers on the web for the info, or they could even go as far as a store clerk opening retail boxes and grabbing it, etc. There are lots of ways to go about it. I imagine they wouldn't even necessarily need a huge amount of them, only enough to be a representative sample.

And yes, everyone using the same serial on their modded HDD might be how MS will detect the modded HDDs. That's the point of creating a 'keygen' application for the serials in the first place.

I remember credit card number extrapolators that could be fed one single legit CC number and output countless, seemingly legit, variations on that number all the way back in 1996/1997. I imagine they were available before that as well, if I would have bothered looking.

I'm not saying that this would definitely work. I am just saying that it isn't as far-fetched as you may think.

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