XBox 360 DVD region hack

Posted Jul 20th 2007 5:56PM by Will O'Brien
Filed under: xbox hacks

[XanTium] sent this in a few days ago, but I thought you guys would dig it. Here are the details straight from his email:

Hackers on the XBH forums managed to change DVD key and Game Region Code in the Xbox 360 'Key Vault' (that stores on flashchip: console certificate(s), per-box private keys, DVD key, however NOT any code-related encryption keys).
However you should know the 'Key Vault' is encrypted with the per-xbox360 'CPU key', so that means this hack is only possible on Hypervisor exploitable Xbox360s (kernel 4532 and 4548) for now. You will of course also have to read/flash the Xbox360 flashchip (by desoldering it and read/flash it with programmer or for example use the versatile Infectus dev chip)

You can read up on some more details here or get a login and check out the actual forum thread. The end result: play EU games on your US 360. (It doesn't sound like the DVD movie region has been successfully changed, but modded DVD players are easy to make.)

Reader Comments

(Page 1)

1. hackaday and gmail - competing for the longest running "beta" status of all time!

Posted at 7:50PM on Jul 20th 2007 by lain

2. i agree with #1.

but, this is a good hack. other than the fact that you have to desolder/flash/resolder even though we all could do that with ease. but where to get a cheap programmer?

Posted at 1:13AM on Jul 21st 2007 by apple

3. my 4 yr/old maxtor 160gb diamondmax plus just died...

upon further inspection i see burned out caps on the underside :o - anyone have a replacement power board for it?!

Manchester, UK... - will pay of course!

I also agree with post 1 :D - very long beta :D

Chris L

Posted at 7:06AM on Jul 21st 2007 by chris

4. You should be able to replace caps on the controller board fairly easily, I've done it on a few occasions. Tedious but not impossible.

Good luck!

Rob

Posted at 3:09PM on Jul 21st 2007 by Rob

5. I don't know about you guys, and girls, but I personally boycott forums and websites who make registering mandatory just to view images, and forum posts. It's a like a nasty little marketing gimmick -hey..like spam.

You can probably find more technical forums and mailing lists on reverse engineering the firmware anyway. I find discovering software bugs in embedded devices just as intriguing as the next person, but screw registering just to read a forum, the information isn't -that- significant.

Posted at 10:29PM on Jul 23rd 2007 by TJHooker

6. Yes! but do you have any guesses?

Posted at 2:10AM on Jul 26th 2007 by Corissa

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