“bunnie” Reflects on Recent Xbox 360 Hacking

In case you have no idea who bunnie is and what his connection with the Xbox 360 is, well what we could teall you is that he is one of the many hackers who helped push the Xbox to its current state. According to him, he recently completed his PhD thesis on supercomputer architecture, and that accomplishment gives him more time to play with the Xbox.

Recently, a Wall Street Journal article tackled bunnie’s dabblings on the Xbox 360. Although he mentioned that most of the article info was accurate, there are just some things that he has to clarify.

First of, he wants to clarify the “bunnie v. specialist” issue. He says that “hacking the 360 is not a race between me (bunnie) and The Specialist; the “bunnie v. Specialist” tag line is a result of the WSJÂ’s editorial latitude and their perspective on the scene…I give The Specialist huge props for his DVD firmware hack; itÂ’s a great hack and I respect his work a lot. When we found out about his work we were very excited and appreciated the great contributions heÂ’s made in furthering an understanding of the overall security system of the 360.”

Second, he also wanted people to know that “while I  (he) have been dabbling in the Xbox360, IÂ’ve been a bit delinquent lately–very busy with my day job, and I havenÂ’t touched the Xbox360 to do any real work on it for a couple months. I owe Speedy22 an apology for not being more diligent about sending him micrographs of the XCPU, but really, right now the pictures arenÂ’t very interesting because all the metal is still on the chip…I also owe tmbinc an apology, I was supposed to run a set of experiments on the “virgin” ROM images that I never got around to. If you still need those results, IÂ’ll get to it.”

As for his future Xbox 360 hacking plans, he plans on working on a refined technique that will “gain access to the polysilicon layer  of the XCPU while being non-destructive to the function of the chip. Such access is currently thought to be a major stumbling block to extracting the necessary keys for decrypting firmware images on the Xbox360–and the first step toward homebrewing code on the Xbox360.”

But if you are expecting homebrews soon, well, it might take a long period of time before that happens. Still bunnie remains optimistic about it. With that, let’s wish him the best of luck to all his future plans that aims to improve the Xbox gaming experience.

In case you have no idea who bunnie is and what his connection with the Xbox 360 is, well what we could teall you is that he is one of the many hackers who helped push the Xbox to its current state. According to him, he recently completed his PhD thesis on supercomputer architecture, and that accomplishment gives him more time to play with the Xbox.

Recently, a Wall Street Journal article tackled bunnie’s dabblings on the Xbox 360. Although he mentioned that most of the article info was accurate, there are just some things that he has to clarify.

First of, he wants to clarify the “bunnie v. specialist” issue. He says that “hacking the 360 is not a race between me (bunnie) and The Specialist; the “bunnie v. Specialist” tag line is a result of the WSJÂ’s editorial latitude and their perspective on the scene…I give The Specialist huge props for his DVD firmware hack; itÂ’s a great hack and I respect his work a lot. When we found out about his work we were very excited and appreciated the great contributions heÂ’s made in furthering an understanding of the overall security system of the 360.”

Second, he also wanted people to know that “while I  (he) have been dabbling in the Xbox360, IÂ’ve been a bit delinquent lately–very busy with my day job, and I havenÂ’t touched the Xbox360 to do any real work on it for a couple months. I owe Speedy22 an apology for not being more diligent about sending him micrographs of the XCPU, but really, right now the pictures arenÂ’t very interesting because all the metal is still on the chip…I also owe tmbinc an apology, I was supposed to run a set of experiments on the “virgin” ROM images that I never got around to. If you still need those results, IÂ’ll get to it.”

As for his future Xbox 360 hacking plans, he plans on working on a refined technique that will “gain access to the polysilicon layer  of the XCPU while being non-destructive to the function of the chip. Such access is currently thought to be a major stumbling block to extracting the necessary keys for decrypting firmware images on the Xbox360–and the first step toward homebrewing code on the Xbox360.”

But if you are expecting homebrews soon, well, it might take a long period of time before that happens. Still bunnie remains optimistic about it. With that, let’s wish him the best of luck to all his future plans that aims to improve the Xbox gaming experience.