Xbox Security The Xbox is a sixth generation video game console produced by Microsoft Corporation. It was Microsoft's first foray into the gaming console market, and competed directly with Sony's PlayStation 2 and the Nintendo GameCube. It was released on November 15, 2001 in North America, February 22, 2002 in Japan, and March 14, 2002 in Europe and Australia. It is the predecessor to Microsoft's Xbox 360 console. The remarkable success of the upstart Sony PlayStation worried Microsoft in late 1990s. The growing video game market seemed to threaten the PC market which Microsoft had dominated and relied upon for most of its revenues. Additionally, a venture into the gaming console market would diversify Microsoft's product line, which up to that time had been heavily concentrated on software. The Xbox was Microsoft's first product that ventured into the video game console market, after having collaborated with Sega in porting Windows CE to the Dreamcast console. Notable launch titles for the console included Halo: Combat Evolved, Amped: Freestyle Snowboarding, Dead or Alive 3, Project Gotham Racing, and Oddworld: Munch's Oddysee. Development The Xbox was initially developed within Microsoft by a small team that included game developer Seamus Blackley (an agent with Creative Artists Agency representing video game creators). Microsoft repeatedly delayed the console, which was revealed at the end of 1999 following interviews of Microsoft CEO Bill Gates. Gates stated that a gaming/multimedia device was essential for multimedia convergence in the new times of digital entertainment. On March 10, 2000 the "X-box Project" was officially confirmed by Microsoft with a press release. The Xbox was originally to be named "DirectX-box", to show the extensive use of DirectX within the console's technology. "Xbox" was the final name decided by marketing, but the console still retains some hints towards DirectX, most notably the "X"-shaped logo, which DirectX is famous for, along with the "X" shape on the top of the system. As the console approached launch, Microsoft's J Allard (is a Corporate Vice President and the Chief XNA Architect at Microsoft) was responsible for the hardware and system software development, Ed Fries (was vice president of game publishing at Microsoft during much of the Xbox's lifecycle) was responsible for game development on the platform, and Mitch Koch was responsible for sales and marketing; all three reported to Robbie Bach (the President of Entertainment & Devices Division at Microsoft). This team was also primarily responsible for Microsoft's follow-up product, the Xbox 360. Xbox launch price was pretty high ( Europe 479.99 € in 14.3.2002; North America 299 $ in 15.10.2001; Oceania 699 AU$ in 14.3.2002). With a price-dropped PlayStation 2 (more than 100 € or $ cheaper) and a comparatively inexpensive GameCube (even cheaper than PS2) as competition, many users were naturally reluctant to invest in the console. Microsoft countered with a 100 $ price drop (and its equivalent in the rest of world) on April 26, 2002, just a month and 12 days after its initial launch. To avoid frustrating early adopters, they offered any two current games and an extra controller for free to any purchaser who could provide a sales receipt showing the original higher price. By September 15, 2005, Microsoft reported a four billion dollar loss in selling the Xbox gaming system. The Xbox has been discontinued as of November 13, 2006. Hardware Xbox drives Xbox was the first console to incorporate a hard disk drive, used primarily for storing game saves compressed in ZIP archives and content downloaded from Xbox Live. This eliminated the need for separate memory cards ( older consoles must had featured built-in battery backup memory prior to this). Most of the games also use the hard drive as a disk cache, for faster game loading times. Some games support "custom soundtracks", another unusual feature allowed by the hard drive. An Xbox owner can rip music from standard audio CDs to the hard drive and play their custom soundtrack, in addition to the original soundtrack of Xbox games that support the feature. The Xbox is based on commodity PC hardware and runs a stripped-down version of the Windows 2000 kernel using APIs based largely on DirectX 8.1. however, it also incorporates changes optimized for gaming and multimedia uses as well as restrictions designed to prevent uses not approved by Microsoft. The Xbox does not use Windows CE (variation of Microsoft's Windows operating system for minimalistic computers and embedded systems) due to Microsoft internal politics at the time, as well as limited support in Windows CE for DirectX. The Xbox itself is much larger and heavier than its contemporaries. This is largely due to a bulky tray- loading DVD-ROM drive and the standard-size 3.5 inch hard drive. However, the Xbox has also pioneered safety features, such as breakaway cables for the controllers to prevent the console from being yanked from the shelf. To cut manufacturing costs, and to provide a more reliable DVD-ROM drive (some of the early units' drives gave Disc Reading Errors due to the unreliable Thomson DVD-ROM drives used). Later generation of Xbox units that used the Thomson TGM-600 DVD-ROM drives and the Philips VAD6011 DVD-ROM drives were still vulnerable to failure that rendered the consoles either unable to read newer discs or caused them to halt the console with an error code usually indicating a PIO/DMA identification failure, respectively. Technical specifications •CPU: 32-bit 733 MHz Coppermine-based Mobile Celeron in Micro-PGA2 package. 180 nm process. •SSE floating point SIMD. 4 single-precision floating point numbers per c lock cycle. •MMX integer SIMD. •133 MHz 64-bit GTL+ front side bus to GPU. •32 KB L1 cache. 128 KB on-die L2 "Advanced Transfer Cache". •Shared memory subsystem •64 MB DDR SDRAM at 200 MHz; 6.4 GB/s •Supplied by Hynix or Samsung depending on manufacture date and location. •GPU and system chipset: 233 MHz "NV2A" ASIC. Co-developed by Microsoft and NVIDIA. •4 pixel pipelines with 2 texture units each •932 megapixels/second (233 MHz x 4 pipelines), 1,864 megatexels/second (932 MP x 2 texture units) (peak) •115 million vertices/second, 125 million particles/second (peak) •Peak triangle performance: 29,125,000 32-pixel triangles/sec raw or w. 2 textures and lit.[citation needed] •485,416 triangles per frame at 60fps[citation needed] •970,833 triangles per frame at 30fps[citation needed] •4 textures per pass, texture compression, full scene anti-aliasing (NV Quincunx, supersampling, multisampling) •Bilinear, trilinear, and anisotropic texture filtering •Similar to the GeForce 3 and GeForce 4 PC GPUs. •Storage media •2x – 5x (2.6 MB/s – 6.6 MB/s) CAV DVD-ROM •8 or 10 GB, 3.5 in, 5,400 RPM hard disk. Formatted to 8 GB. FATX file system. •Optional 8 MB memory card for saved game file transfer. •Audio processor: NVIDIA "MCPX" (a.k.a. SoundStorm "NVAPU") •64 3D sound channels (up to 256 stereo voices) •HRTF Sensaura 3D enhancement •MIDI DLS2 Support •Monaural, Stereo, Dolby Surround, Dolby Digital Live 5.1, and dts Surround (DVD movies only) audio output options •Integrated 10/100BASE-TX wired ethernet •DVD movie playback •A/V outputs: composite video, S-Video, component video, SCART, Optical Digital TOSLINK, and stereo RCA analog audio •Resolutions: 480i, 576i, 480p, 720p and 1080i •Controller ports: 4 proprietary USB ports •Weight: 3.86 kg (8.5 lb) •Dimensions: 320 × 100 × 260 mm (12.5 × 4 × 10.5 in) Microsoft wants the software monopoly on the Xbox platform. Nobody should be able to publish unlicensed software, because Microsoft wants to gain money with the games to amortize the hardware losses. Obviously it is important to Microsoft that it is not possible to run copied games on the Xbox. Microsoft decided to design a single security system that was supposed to make Linux, homebrew/unlicensed software and copies impossible. The idea to accomplish this was by simply locking out all software that is either not on the intended (original) medium or not by Microsoft. On the one hand, this idea makes the security system easier and there are less possible points off attack. But of the three consoles of its generation, Xbox, Playstation 2 and GameCube, the Xbox is the one whose security system has been compromised first, the one that is now easiest to modify for a hobbyist, the one with the most security system workarounds, and the one with the most powerful hacks. This may be, because the Xbox security is the weakest one of the three, but also because Open Source people, homebrew people and crackers attacked the Xbox, while the Open Source people did not attack the Playstation 2, as Linux had been officially supported by Sony, so the total number of hackers was lower and buying them some more time. Security ideas and its mistakes In order to allow only licensed and authentic code to run, it is necessary to build a TCPA/Palladiumlike chain of trust, which reaches from system boot to the actual execution of the game. The first link is from the CPU to the code in ROM, which includes the Windows kernel, and the second link is from the kernel to the game. There are several reasons that the operating system is contained in ROM (256 KB) instead of being stored on hard disk, like on a PC. First, it allows a faster startup, as the kernel can initialize while the hard disk is spinning up, furthermore, there is one link less in the chain of trust, and in case verification of the kernel gets compromised, it is harder to overwrite a ROM chip than modify data on a hard disk.