The Hidden Boot Code of the Xbox

I’ve been quite busy with work and haven’t had the opportunity to blog lately. However, I’ve accumulated a fair number of items tagged as ‘to read’ and should have more material to write about soon.

To get things started, I just finished reading ‘The Hidden Boot Code of the Xbox‘ and thought it was pretty good.

It discusses some of the security mechanisms implemented in the Xbox’s (apparently not so) hidden boot code and the various vulnerabilities that are present (or were present depending on your Xbox version). If you can ignore the harshness of certain parts, it is a fairly interesting piece. It must be tough developing within the constraints of 512bytes (not to mention the timing constraints of the very competitive console industry), I wouldn’t fault the engineers.

The article’s talk back page is here.