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Xbox Security Defeated By Grad Student

A graduate student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology discovered a way to foil the Xbox's security system, which in theory could allow someone to run non-Xbox applications on the processor.

Game Developer, Staff

June 3, 2002

1 Min Read

In a paper he posted on the MIT web site, Andrew Huang, a PhD student, described a "secret boot block" in the Xbox's media processor (built by Nvidia) which contains the the console's encryption algorithm and security key. He decrypted it using a custom "tap board" he created which intercepted data traveling between the central processor and the media chip over the HyperTransport bus.

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