Releasing my book "Hacking the Xbox" as a free PDF in honor of Aaron Swartz

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!" :).

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

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

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.

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!

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

Do you have a way to send donations?

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.

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.

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

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

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.

Thanks a lot bunnie!

The author is inspired by the show Suits!