
Releasing my book "Hacking the Xbox" as a free PDF in honor of Aaron Swartz - bunnie
http://nostarch.com/xboxfree
======
casca
For those who don't know, Bunnie is an absolute rockstar in the
hacking/reverse engineering space. His detailed research and clear
explanations are an inspiration. If you'd like a quick idea of what you're
getting into, read this:
<http://web.mit.edu/bunnie/www/proj/anatak/AIM-2002-008.pdf>

And thank you Bill Pollock! No Starch Press is a revelation in the tech
publishing space. The books they choose to publish have always been clear and
useful. A friend was showing me a book he just bought this weekend and I saw
the logo on the cover. He did look at me strangely when I said - "No Starch,
must be great!" :).

~~~
manojlds
Learn you a Haskell and Land of Lisp will always remain amongst my favorite
books!

------
jevinskie
Love your book! I already own the dead tree copy. Any idea about how
hard/costly it would be to sniff the PS3's XDR bus? Even better if you can
modify just one 4-byte write. Before the lv0ldr keys were released publicly,
it was thought that a well funded piracy group had figured out a way to dump
XDR RAM because they could only resign games for lower firmwares, they
couldn't patch out key checks in new firmwares (no lv0ldr private key).

At one point in time I was trying to figure out how to use the XDR bus
calibration routines to write arbitrary memory at startup through the Cell
BE's SPI configuration ring. Fun times!

While having fun with the PS3, I got a DMCA takedown notice for an "anti-
circumvention tool" that decrypted and reencrypted a sort of "sandbox profile"
for the PS3's OS. I hadn't even interpreted the data yet! That scared the crap
out of me, especially since Sony went after a German PS3 hacker to the tune of
€750,000. [0] I have no idea how Aaron felt with a federal prosecutor after
him. =(

[0]: <http://geohotgotsued.blogspot.com/2011/02/grafchokolo.html>

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billpollock
bunnie's book launched a revolution in hardware hacking. I hope it will
continue to be the start of many more.

Aaron's death cannot and must not be forgotten. Support the people and
organizations who work for our freedoms and keep the fires burning, always.

\--------------------- Bill Pollock, Founder No Starch Press

------
Kliment
Slightly offtopic, but THANK YOU BUNNIE for being an all around awesome
person. Not just this one thing, but your blog and all the cool stuff you've
done in the past. It's an honour to be on the same planet as you. Welcome to
HN.

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arocks
From the book:

> This is a book about hacking in the traditional sense: about the process and
> methods of exploration.

Probably HN is the most appropriate forum to post this. Thank you bunnie for
making this excellent work available to all!

------
noonespecial
There are times I wish there was an option to use some of my karma points to
upvote a submission further. This would be one of those times. This is the
kind of thing I come to HN looking for that I'm unlikely to find other places.

------
hollerith
Someone please edit the title: it is "Swartz", not "Schwartz".

~~~
bunnie
oops! good catch.

~~~
gregpilling
Thank you for the book. You are an inspiration to us at
<http://sascase.com/projects.html/>

------
asdfologist
By the way, what happened to MIT's probe into their handling of Aaron's case?
They said it would take a few weeks but it's been almost 2 months now.

------
tmh88j
I'm not very experienced with circuits in the slightest bit. EE 101 is about
the extent of my experience so I was expecting this to be way over my
head...Man, was I wrong. You did an amazing job with this, I'm blown away that
you can make such a complex subject easy to understand.

------
TheLegace
Hey Bunnie, you are by far the best in inspiring me to be Computer Engineer. I
started hacking the first Xbox and couldn't believe that was because of you. I
am actually really interested in your open laptop idea. I am hoping to work on
my own laptop.

------
kyboren
I bought your book way back when Borders was still a solid company and
devoured it. As an impressionable young teen, "Hacking the Xbox" inspired me
as much as 2600 ever did. Looks like it's time to re-read it, again.

Thanks for everything you've done, not least of which is serving as a powerful
role model! We may have lost one of our own, but your leadership by example
shows we can become stronger for it.

------
pakmans
I'm not a hacker, but took a peek out of curiosity and was "disappointed" to
see that this is (apparently) about the first Xbox and not the 360.

~~~
cweiss
Don't let that stop you - This book is far more about _thinking_ about how to
hack than it is about actually hacking the XBox. The lessons learned here
apply far wider than Microsoft's game machine and console hacking in general.
I bought this in dead-tree form many years ago and it's one of the few tech
books that's managed to survive the several "great purges" since then.

------
metachris
I'm halfway through this book, and just wanted to stop by to say it's a very
good read! Thank you for releasing it for free.

------
gnyman
Is the book available somewhere in epub/mobi format? Seems like even if you
pay for it you get only a PDF?

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niggler
Do you have a way to send donations?

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wuest
Welp. I almost purchased this book last week in addition to the IDA book, but
decided to purchase one at a time. I hope the EFF enjoys my money; you forced
my hand.

------
bulletmagnet
Good for you. It's content that you wrote and you, as the author and copyright
holder, made a decision to release it for free.

That's not exactly what Aaron Swartz stood for, though.

~~~
tmh88j
I noticed that Bunnie attended MIT, maybe he was a friend of Aaron.

------
arundhaj
I don't use Xbox. However, I appreciate your generosity.

~~~
gohwell
The book illustrates the different techniques bunnie used to hack the xbox.
Great read if you're into hardware hacking. Many of the techniques can be
applied to other systems. No Xbox required!

------
bamdadd
Can someone provide a mirror for the pdf file please ? I can't download it.
Seems too much load on the server.

~~~
billpollock
I'll check in with bunnie to see how he'd like to handle.

Bill

~~~
billpollock
I'm posting new links to our site now.

------
m0skit0
First thank you for making your work available for free. Looks like very
interesting to read. And second, you can't exepect anything else from a
capitalist economy Justice system. (Almost?) all life aspects in a capitalist
economy suffer from this "self-agrandishment" (also known since inmemorial
times as "greed") illness. It's the basic concept of capitalism, so nothing
new actually.

~~~
kaoD
If political/economical views are reduced to its basic concepts, then
communism is about sharing and socialism is about the state caring about its
citizens. Capitalism isn't about greed either, but about individual freedom.

But that might be a bit too reductionist (let Stalin spread the love).

IMHO this is not about "capitalism". It's about "human greediness". Homo
hominis lupus.

~~~
schoen
I think you mean "homini" (dative), not "hominis" (genitive).

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_homini_lupus>

~~~
kaoD
Yep, I should probably refresh my Latin skills :)

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mseidl
Thanks a lot bunnie!

------
icemelt8
The author is inspired by the show Suits!

