Xbox 360 freeBOOT v0.02 released


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Another milestone in Xbox 360 hacking has been reached, an application called freeBOOT will now allow your jtag hacked Xbox 360 to boot a patched kernel / dashboard.

Think of this like custom firmware for the PSP, in plain English this means your Xbox 360 can run the latest dashboard with most of the security checks removed.

What does this mean to you?

  • Basically you can do anything you want with your Xbox 360.
  • Your console can run anything coded with the official Xbox 360 development kit (XDK) such as the mame emulator (XBMC 360 anyone?) without needing the application / game to be signed by Microsoft.
  • You can connect any hard drive you want to the Xbox 360 and load applications and games from it. An Xbox 360 with a 1TB hard drive? Yes please? hey its cheaper than the official 120gig!
  • The Xbox 360 can now boot games from any region on your Xbox 360 either from DVD or the hard drive.
  • Games can be patched and customized so user created maps for games such as Halo, Gears of War and Call of Duty are now possible.
  • Much more but I will keep this short and sweet...

Video of it in action: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=njeD-lnWCYM

As you can see unsigned applications are been loaded from the latest 8955 dashboard.

Read more of the technical details at Xbox-Scene

Thought this might be of interest to some people.

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Looks like the 360 will be going the way of the Wii with USB loaders and what not. One thing everyone should realize though the above will only work on pre-NXE updated consoles. So you're probably going to have to wait on a way to downgrade or an exploit to appear.

Of course you'll have to sacrifice Live, I doubt any of this will ever be stealth.

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will this stop bans?

I dont think this will even let you connect to live so you could say it does ;) i imagine it would be a pretty much instant ban like the Xbox 1 days of going online with a modded dashboard / bios.

wow. I hope the increased piracy doesn't kill the 360 like it did the first Xbox (one of the many reasons IMO).

This hack basically allows some decent homebrew applications to be developed for the 360, such as Xbox Media Centre for example.

Ofcourse it could be used for piracy, but that?s been possible for years anyway.

Does it skip the disc check for HDD installed games?

Kind of.. you can decrypt and modify a ripped games .xex to remove the region check and allow it to boot from the hard drive, however you can?t just install a game yet.

Looks like the 360 will be going the way of the Wii with USB loaders and what not. One thing everyone should realize though the above will only work on pre-NXE updated consoles.

Yup, this will only work for consoles manufactured before June 18th 2009 (might be the 16th, but around that date anyway) and that haven?t been updated past the 7371 dashboard update.

Edited by InsaneNutter
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This won't stop Microsoft from banning you.

I don't think people who have modded consoles are that fussed. If you pirated 4 single player games you've saved enough for a new console. :/

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If this thing becomes the rage ...... all those banned consoles may have second shot at some usefulness .

Sadly, if the console is banned there is an EXTREMELY high chance that they'll not be exploitable (at least until another exploit is found, which may well be "never") as the bannings occurred months after MS patched the security flaw.

Still, if another exploit IS found, it'll be well worth picking up a banned 360 for this. No live, but fully exploitable means homebrew, which means it wont be long before we see XBMC360 (Which has been in development for a while).

In other news, an XEX loader was released that quite literally lets you load a 360 executable (including those from games) from any location - which includes USB HDDs.

As some of you may have noticed, freeboot requires a "dual nand" to work but ANOTHER hacked dash (XBReboot) was also released which does not. In other words, if you have an exploitable 360 and some patience, things are about to get VERY interesting for you.

I managed to pick myself up a barely-used falcon a few weeks ago (So barely used it still has blades!) and when I get a decent soldering Iron, I will very much be taking part in this (I attempted this same hack before but the soldering Iron I had was just no good, it wont even properly melt solder when applied directly to the tip - and yes, it's clean! That's what I get for being cheap). I want me some MKV!

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So if I bought an arcade version and got a USB hard drive, it would work but not online?

I'm not sure if it works with a USB drive + as I said in my previous post, you'll need a "chip" to hold part of the firmware..... Hopefully they'll manage to get rid of that requirement

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No, actually it's kinda meant for banned consoles

Yes it does

It's not meant for banned consoles at all and as I said, 99% of banned consoles will be unable to do this unless another exploit is found (of which chances are slim).

So if I bought an arcade version and got a USB hard drive, it would work but not online?

If the Arcade is "exploitable", then yes. Microsoft officially patched this exploit with a dashboard update that was released on August 12, HOWEVER new consoles manufacturered in JULY came pre-patched with a fix for this exploit. In other words, your console needs to be June 09 or older AND not updated. If you're seriously interested in this, I'd advise getting one now as they're going to be harder to find as time goes on.

USB loading has been done, I believe it currently only supports FAT/FAT32 partitions but the loader is in the very early stages.

I'm not sure if it works with a USB drive + as I said in my previous post, you'll need a "chip" to hold part of the firmware..... Hopefully they'll manage to get rid of that requirement

You do NOT need a chip to do this. Yes, you need what's called a Cygnosis (It's basically a second flash chip) for freeboot, however as I said in my post there's an ALTERNATIVE dashboard modification called XBR (or XBReboot) that DOES NOT require any additional "chips", just the standard "JTAG" hack which consists of some wires, resistors and diodes (Soldering involved, but the total cost of components is like ?1, maybe ?2). XBR does everything freeboot v0.02 currently does (plus something else).

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Arcade games and DLC have been hacked too: http://forums.xbox-scene.com/index.php?showtopic=698149

This means anyone who jtags a console can use arcade games and DLC they have legally purchased, however it does mean arcade games and DLC can be pirated too.

If you're seriously interested in this, I'd advise getting one now as they're going to be harder to find as time goes on.

Totally agree, its actually quite easy to find an exploitable console at the moment however I would imagine after Christmas a lot of the older exploitable consoles will have been sold and updated on live.

In the UK Sainsburys are selling the old 60gb pro consoles, these are 16mb jaspers that should be exploitable: http://www.sainsburys.co.uk/sol/shop/gifti...sole_white.html

In the US i hear Best Buy and Wallmart are selling the old 60gb pro consoles too.

Some 60gb pros were manufactured after the middle of June and can not be exploited. Check the date on the console before buying it

I got an exploitable jasper off eBay manufactured in March this year with the 7371 dash, so ill be doing the jtag hack on that in the Christmas break :)

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Arcade games and DLC have been hacked too: http://forums.xbox-scene.com/index.php?showtopic=698149

This means anyone who jtags a console can use arcade games and DLC they have legally purchased, however it does mean arcade games and DLC can be pirated too.

Damn they work quick, looks like it truly is going the way of the Wii. Once you get software hacked all hell breaks loose :/ Still at least there's no chance of anyone getting online with all of this.

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Damn they work quick, looks like it truly is going the way of the Wii. Once you get software hacked all hell breaks loose :/ Still at least there's no chance of anyone getting online with all of this.

I know, nothing really happened for months after the original hack... now in less than a week we have 2 hacked kernels / dashboards, xdk homebrew, hacked arcade games / dlc and xex loaders.

Im looking forward to what the next few months will bring homebrew wise.

*Video has been removed by the user*

Copy of the video, good quality compared to most of the others that are on Youtube: http://users.digiex.net/insanenutter/media...EX%20Loader.mp4

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The only thing that sounds appealing to me is being able to play games from any region. So has this been released or is this just what we will see in the near future?

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MS might regret this mass banning, seems like it sparked interest in the homebrew/piracy on the 360 (piracy of DLC and arcade content, the regular games have been pirated for a long long time)

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