There have been a lot of Wii hacking developments this week. The Twilight Hack was released, which is the first exploit of it’s kind. It’s a classic gamesave exploit triggering a stack buffer overflow. This essentially allows us to hijack the system and run our own code. In it’s current state, the hack isn’t much more than a proof of concept and a promising sign of things to come. Since that release, two additional demos have seen the light of day. There is an unplayable pong game (no controls), and a more classic “hello world” app complete with demo-scene graphics:
This may not be anything to write home about just yet, but the cat is officially out of the bag. It’s only a matter of time before more usable homebrew hits, along with loaders, linux, and more. You can follow along at the WiiBrew Wiki, or I will keep you posted on the major developments here.
And not just the ending, either. The whole game. As in to download and play. This of course isn’t unusual by any means, especially with a few stores breaking street date, rebel employees, and a flood of copies on ebay. In the right hands (or wrong, depending on your perspective) that equates to a scene release or torrent.
From the looks of it, at least two groups have released Halo 3 in the past two days, with ccclx the only making it onto nforce (nfo).
Today Microsoft has released a minor update to enable support for the future “big button” remote. There is already speculation this update has something to do with Halo 3, and “the banhammer.” While there are currently hacked firmwares to play this release and others on your 360 undetected, Microsoft could once again up the ante and ban all modded consoles that connect to Live. There haven’t yet been any reports of banned consoles after todays update.
It has been long rumored that Microsoft would start banning 360s, and people were certain it would start after the spring update. Modders best efforts have proven insufficient in stopping detection. Days before the spring update, the hacking community released new firmwares to preemptively protect them and keep their modded status hidden. Microsoft apparently has a few tricks up their sleeves, because even people with the latest firmwares have gotten the lifetime ban. There have been reports that even those that haven’t played backups on live have gotten banned, which indicates they are detecting the modified firmware, and not the backup disc. Hackers have been fairly confident that the firmware itself was undetectable, and it would be the discs themselves that would be targeted.
The morale of the story is, if you like Xbox Live, don’t mod your console. The banhammer shows no pity, and no matter how justified you think you are, no one will hear your pleas. There have been numerous reports of people with new and unmodded consoles getting banned. There is no word on what the recourse of action will be for this customers. I read one early report that someone was asked to send their console in for MS to verifiy it wasn’t modified. There is no word how many thousands of consoles have been banned from live, but I can’t imagine it would be feasible for them to do this for everyone.
The message is very clear, and made louder by waiting for the Halo 3 Beta to start. I can’t imagine the regret many must be feeling. As for me, I knew there was good reason I have two 360s
The download is now working. HOWEVER, you need to clear your cache, which means you will lose your game updates (you will simply be prompted to re-download them next time you launch a game). Here is how to do it:
Restart your box, then do this:
Go to the dashboard.
Go to the system tab
Select memory
Highlight your hard drive
Press Y
Press X, X, LB, RB, X, X
Say yes when prompted to do maintenance on your hard drive.
Enjoy! I’m sure this will be sorted out in a bit and you wont need to clear your cache, but since I know how impatient you all are… see you soon. Start your download before the masses!
Disclaimer: This can’t be confirmed until someone actually gets their hands on the new 120GB HDD, but in theory this should work.
Remember back in January when TheSpecialist released HDDHackr, a tool which allows you to use a non-certified hdd in your Xbox 360? It wasn’t that big of a deal at the time because you were still limited to 20GB of usable space. The reason being that you need to rip the security sector of an official drive, and write it to your new, unofficial drive. The security sector has the drive size, and although you could use a larger HDD, only the amount of space indicated in the security sector is usable.
With the dawn of the 120GB HDD from Microsoft, we will now be able to obtain a new security sector allowing you to upgrade your current drive to 120GB. This has been the assumption since TheSpecialist released the first version of HDDHackr.
The current version of HDDHackr is limited to using a Western Digital SATA BEVS HDD. If you plan to upgrade to 120GB, you will need a drive of at LEAST 120GB. Larger will also work, but only 120GB will be usable. Newegg carries the ideal drive for $84.99 shipped.
Before you go making any purchases in haste, keep in mind none of this is proven yet. It is possible Microsoft has added additional security, or at least changed it enough to disable the hack in it’s current state. I don’t think this is very likely, because replacing the drive doesn’t create any security risk for Microsoft or their content suppliers. By applying this hack you are rewriting your drives firmware to match that of the stock drive, security and all. Content on your unsupported drive is no more or less secure.
Rejoice, because in all likelihood the crafty among us will be able to upgrade our current drives for a mere $85. I just wish you luck trying to not lose all your game saves and content in the process.
When the new drives are in the wild, we will keep you posted on how this develops.
The hacker Cpasjuste has managed to get Ubuntu Linux booting on his 360 thanks to: dvd firmware hack, Hypervisor Vulnerability, King Kong shader exploit, XeLL bootloader and linux xenon patches. The latest dashboard update has already blocked out the hypervisor vulnerability, so this will only be possibly with older dashboard versions. Regardless, this will prove useful to a handful, and hopefully help find more back doors for the rest of us. I envision a game of cat and mouse (and many banned consoles) in the near future, much like with Sony and the PSP firmware upgrades.
Easily the sweetest Wiimote “hack” I’ve seen. The Amazing Rolo has created a full blown looping application for OSX + Wii controller. Just check out the video to see what this is capable off. Watch it all the way through to the end and your amazement will continue to build exponentially (or maybe I’m just a sucker for non-traditional instruments). The performance at the end shows you just what this is capable of. The software is already up for the task of live performances.
My most wanted feature: dual Wiimote action! That could be wicked difficult to master, but the possibilities would be endless.
Remember back in January when TheSpecialist released 
The current version of HDDHackr is limited to using a Western Digital SATA BEVS HDD. If you plan to upgrade to 120GB, you will need a drive of at LEAST 120GB. Larger will also work, but only 120GB will be usable. Newegg carries the ideal drive for