Comment by Jerrrry
4 years ago
eFuses get physically melted by software.
Microsoft bricked thousands of illicit China-developer xbox360 kits one spring morning, in the winter of 2010.
they also have bricked retail xbox360 consoles of nefarious (teenage) actors. cannot go into more detail on that one. maybe after a few more years.
Ironically, criminal damage has its origins in the Frame-Breaking Act of 1812, carrying the death penalty, and designed to stem the rising tide of Luddites. Today companies like Nintendo, Microsoft and Sony are the Luddites.
Because the damage is permanent, to "tangible property", and "without lawful excuse" (and please don't knee-jerk to arguing "they can do what they want because you agreed to it" - you didn't and they can't), I'd think there's a very good case for criminal damage as distinct action from any computer misuse recourse.
The argument needs to made, not on behalf of the users as a class action, but on behalf of another stakeholder - the environment. Every time a company makes and sells products that can be "bricked" they contribute to e-waste (see [1][2] if this issue isn't yet on your radar - it's something every hacker should be aware of).
I have faith that smart people in European politics genuinely get this merging problem, and we have the courage, time and willingness to bring new legislation or trade restrictions that would make it impossible to sell such products in Europe. Even better I would like to see Microsoft made to pay the cleanup costs.
[1] https://digitalvegan.net/digital-vegan-print-sample.pdf (ch 17 Wasteland)
[2] https://www.fathom.pro/blog/2020/09/world-wide-waste-an-inte...
Shouldn't the scammers pay the cleanup charges?
Like if you want to sell illicit XBoxes, it's on you to ensure that the thing can't be rendered inoperable by a third-party software update, it's not the third-party's responsibility to account for your hardware when they do software updates.
Doing software updates that brick tampered hardware is harder to make a sarcastic argument about.
Why can't I tamper with hardware I bought and paid for? It's not theirs to brick, whatever the justification.
I hate that the idea that you rent stuff from companies, instead of buying and owning, is now so ingrained that people defend actively destroying someone's equipment remotely.
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> Shouldn't the scammers pay the cleanup charges?
No. First, the primary culprit is who designs and deploys a mechanism to do harm. If I set a lethal trap on my property with a sign saying "Beware the 10,00 Volt mantrap", I am not excused when a burglar is injured - even though they are breaking the law by trespass. Secondly, it seems that the manufacturer gets to decide, arbitrarily and post-facto (post-sale/agreement) what constitutes a "scammer". Finally, with "e-fuses" you are setting a trap mechanism on my property which I have purchased in fair expectation of my rights.
> it's on you to ensure that the thing can't be rendered inoperable by a (third-party?) software update
I believe in many places like the US, it could be breaking the law to ensure that, since reverse engineering and circumvention of protections would be required.
Of course you're right that there's a sort of moral responsibility on people not to vandalise serviceable goods such that they become waste. But people throw away perfectly working technology every day.
If by "third party" (I think we would use "first party" here) you mean the vendor/manufacturer when you say:
> it's not the (vendors) responsibility to account for your hardware when they do software updates.
then I heartily disagree. It's certainly their moral responsibility, and, unless they offer owners a reasonable way to disable updates, it ought to be their legal responsibility too.
But that's not what's at issue. Otherwise your argument makes it seem like the update "accidentally" damaged the owners property. Quite the contrary, the vendor is sending out updates designed to cause harm, and in full knowledge and punitive intent. Am I mistaken?
> Doing software updates that brick tampered hardware is harder to make a sarcastic argument about.
I don't follow you. Sarcasm is the lowest form of wit and discouraged per HN guidelines in favour of arguing in "good faith".
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> it's not the third-party's responsibility to account for your hardware when they do software updates
What you're describing here is markedly different than what the gp is referring to: intent matters (determining intent may be difficult in some cases, granted, but it's crystal clear in these specific examples)
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> they also have bricked retail xbox360 consoles of nefarious (teenage) actors
I believe these two podcast episodes cover that in depth.
https://darknetdiaries.com/episode/45/
https://darknetdiaries.com/episode/46/
I have a condition that I cannot listen to media about things I know too much about.
For this reason, I cannot watch/listen to darknet diaries, or a host of other topics. The physical cringe of wanting to correct the record is unbearable, but from what I heard, they are very accurate and have done their research.
RIP anthony
Who is anthony? Does he appear in the podcasts? (I can’t listen to them rn)
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What kind of weird NDA did you sign? Is that even legal?
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Not about the darknet diaries in particular, but you're describing the Gell-Mann Amnesia hypothesis: https://www.epsilontheory.com/gell-mann-amnesia/
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Let’s call this “Gell-Mann Cringe Disorder” after “Gell-Mann Amnesia” :^)
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It's crazy to hear that story told back to me. I wasn't part of the core of it, but everything as intense as xbox-underground has a huge fringe. I was in that fringe. Listening to the background of all that stuff i was a part of is very cool. I remember the leaks, the return scams, the carding, and the circulation of password dumps. It was a crazy time.
Thanks for sharing.
That they built a working Xbox One (before it had even been announced) just by looking at the spec sheets etc. and buying the parts on Newegg is incredible.
Sorry I modified the dvd firmware when I was a teenager. It was really important to me to get level 50 in Halo 2. Hope you can understand lol.
It's okay. I had a 50 in every H3 playlist, and my own cease and desist letter from a few different AAA companies.
We've all been there...
Even John Carmack got in trouble with the police at one time. Luckily he got off with a warning.
I fondly remember flashing my DVD drive on my 360 when I was 15 to play Saints Row (I had an ITCH for a GTA like game). Back then I was scared shitless of possibly bricking it. Now looking back, I laugh because of how trivial the mod was. Pretty sure this was a major contributing factor to me eventually perusing tech in my career.
Modding Xbox/Xbox 360 was for many people. I got started programming with writing CoD MW2 mods.
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>they also have bricked retail xbox360 consoles of nefarious (teenage) actors.
I was in the "xbox underground" group and later worked at Microsoft. they never bricked retails, lol.
I have my bricked retail sitting on my desk, it's my second favorite paperweight.
After CON files were being resigned with 00000' keys, they tried and failed to maintain a "known bad" list of RSA private keypairs that were known to be resigning modified content.
after that patchwork hack failed, because of the spread of CON resigners, they gave up on that effort. You can still find blacklisted keypairs in the NAND, if you looked around.
but my retail was't exactly unmodified, so I was bending the definition of "retail", here...
but yes, they bricked retail consoles posing as xDev and pNET kits.
dont blame them. we were bad kids.
I am confused as to whether it happened in spring or winter.
Cool story bruh
chill eric