Xbox 360 Game Files Extracted By Hackers

A potential first step toward cracking the Xbox 360, the dumping of files from Xbox 360 game discs, has been discovered by a team of hackers known as Team PI Coder, who posted their findings to Xbox emulation site Xbox-Scene.com, according to a ZDNet report. Though the discovery still puts scenesters some ways from breaching the 360's security, a note Team PI Coder released with the news says that "The first task is done. We hope this encourages all hackers, coders and crackers out there to take up the challenge." So far, the "first task" simply involves gaining access to the game's file system, as well as the "dumping" of game files for all of the currently-released Xbox 360 titles. However, due to measures still in place within the system and the games themselves, none of the code will run on an Xbox 360 system or on personal computers. Microsoft seems unconcerned about the progress in cracking the system, noting that the system is much better-protected against cracking than the notoriously easy-to-modify original Xbox. "We have made improvements on both the hardware and software side to protect Xbox 360 against piracy and modding (modification of components)," said a Microsoft representative. "With Xbox 360, we had the benefit of learning from our experiences on Xbox. This allowed us to identify points of weakness that were exploited by hackers in the first generation and to eliminate those vulnerabilities in Xbox 360."