Hacks

UP9600: How to Bit-Bang 9600 Baud RS-232 on the C64

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The user port of the Commodore 64 exposes a TTL-level RS-232 serial port that supports up to 1200 baud1. In 1997, Daniel Dallmann came up with a very sophisticated trick that allowed sending and receiving at 9600 baud2, using slightly different wiring and a dedicated driver. This “UP9600” wiring has become the de-facto standard for all modern accessories, like C64 WiFi modems. Let’s see how UP9600 works. read more

Xbox Serial Number Statistics

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Slashdot had a story recently on how in 1942, the allies were able to estimate the number of German taks produced based on the serial numbers of the tanks. In 2010, a German hacker is doing the exact same thing with Xboxes. This article describes the generic approach, shows some results, and provides previously unreleased raw data of 14,000 Xbox serials so you can do your own statistics! read more

Playstation 3 Hacking – Linux Is Inevitable

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In the talk “Why Silicon Security is still that hard” by Felix Domke at the 24th Chaos Communication Congress in 2007 (in which he described how he hacked the Xbox 360, and bushing had a cameo at the end explaining how they hacked the Wii), I had a little part, in which I argued that “Linux Is Inevitable”: If you lock down a system, it will eventually get hacked. In the light of the recent events happening with PlayStation 3 hacking, let’s revisit them. read more

Dangerous Xbox 360 Update Killing Homebrew

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On Tuesday, Microsoft has released an Xbox 360 software update that overwrites the first stage bootloader of the system. Although there have been numerous software updates for Microsoft’s gaming console in the past, this is the first one to overwrite the vital boot block. Any failure while updating this will break the Xbox 360 beyond repair. Statistics from other systems have shown that about one in a thousand bootloader updates goes wrong, and unless Microsoft has a novel solution to this problem, this puts tens of thousands of Xboxes at risk. read more