An anonymous person at the German 23C3 Hacker Congress showed what could be an Xbox360 hack/exploit during one of the 'Lightning Talks'. Lightning Talks is a daily event at Chaos Communication Congress (C3/CCC). It consists in one hour of several short (limited to 5mins) talks.
In a very short presentation a masked 'hacker' showed an Xbox 360 booting up King Kong (the game, by ubisoft). After loading the game a screen pops up showing an Xbox 360 logo, a Mac logo and Tux (the Linux Penguin) and the words "coming soon...". I also noticed a small PCB is hanging out of his Xbox360 and he's using a laptop (Apple Macbook pro?), but it's not really clear what he's doing with it.
Those who followed hacking discussions might remember hackers did some research around the vector shaders in the King Kong demo on the Xbox 360 Kiosk Disc (that ran from recordable media). The demo (and final game too) allow to modify the shaders (they are not checked/signed). However no exploit to take control of the machine was found back then ... so either this hacker found something here, or he's just showing us his custom modified shaders ;)
This holiday season, score some cool prizes with these yummy products! Kellogg's® is bringing home the ultimate gaming experience, teaming up with Xbox 360™ "inside the box" of some of its most popular foods. Don't miss this chance to score Xbox®-inspired handheld mini-games, game rentals, and cool videogame merchandise.
Beginning this month, Kellogg's will insert one of five Xbox-inspired handheld mini-games in specially marked boxes of many of its popular, ready-to-eat cereals, including Kellogg’s® Apple Jacks®, Kellogg’s® Corn Pops®, and Kellogg’s® Cocoa Rice Krispies®. Collect all five mini hand-held, color background video games, developed exclusively for Kellogg.
Select cereal boxes will also offer free game rentals through GameFly.com, including a 30-day free trial membership redeemable with two Universal Purchasing Codes (UPCs).
Mail-in offers for Xbox knit hats, T-shirts, back sacks, and instant win rewards will be available on packages of Kellogg's® Pop-Tart toaster pastries, Kellogg's® Eggo® waffles and Kellogg-branded fruit flavored snacks.
Here are the Kellogg's products to look for:
Cereal Mini-Games
Look for exclusive mini-games inside specially marked packages of Kellogg's® cereal. There are five mini-games available, with a variety of gaming themes.
Cereal Free Game Rentals
Collect 2 UPC codes from Kellogg’s® cereal packages and mail in with the official order form to get a unique code to enter at www.GameFly.com for a free 30-day membership and game rentals at GameFly. Now you can get the hottest video games delivered right to your door.
Pop-Tarts
Collect three UPC codes and mail in with official order form to get this hip-hop style knit hat that features the Xbox 360 green and gray logo.
Eggo
Collect two UPC codes and send them in with the official order form and $2.99 to get this Xbox 360 back sack, perfect for toting your games and gear.
Twistables
You could win instantly with specially marked packages of Kellogg's™ fruit-flavored snacks! Find a pouch with a winning game piece on it and you're an instant winner of an Xbox 360 console and a game. Even if you're not a big winner, you can still send in one UPC code from Kellogg’s™ Fruit Twistables™, Fruit Streamers™, and Yogos to get a free Xbox 360 T-shirt.
Fruit Rolls
Find exclusive hints for Xbox 360 games inside specially marked packages of Kellogg’s™ Xbox® Rolls.
Here are the top games for 2006, based on Xbox Live connectivity.
The following rankings are based on data collected from 1/1/06 – 12/29/06:
2006 Top Xbox 360 Titles (UU's)
1 Gears of War
2 Hexic HD
3 Call of Duty 2
4 Ghost Recon 3
5 Oblivion
6 PGR3
7 Perfect Dark Zero
8 Call Of Duty 3
9 UNO
10 EA SPORTS™ Fight Night Round 3
11 Saints Row
12 Geometry Wars Evolved
13 DEAD OR ALIVE 4
14 Texas Hold 'em
15 Madden NFL 07
16 DEAD RISING
17 Need for Speed™ Most Wanted
18 Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six® Vegas
19 BFMC
20 Splinter Cell Double Agent
Can it be? Is Hollywood's new DRM posterchild AACS (Advanced Access Content System, see more here) actually quite breakable?
According to a post on our favoritest of forums (Doom9) by DRM hacker du jour muslix64, his new BackupHDDVD tool decrypts and dismantles AACS on a Windows PC.
Just feed the small utility a crypto key (it comes bundled with keys for a few popular HD DVD titles, with the promise of more on the way), and it'll dump the video right off the disc onto your hard drive, supposedly playable in any HD DVD compatible player. If true, this would instantly become the DeCSS of high def optical (where you at, Jon?), as AACS is the copy protection scheme used not only by HD DVD, but by Blu-ray as well. Code and source posted in read link, let us know what you find!
Note: We're working on testing this ourselves, we'll report back with our findings asap.
[Thanks, Max and Adam]
Update: Well, it definitely does something. Click on for some pics and our experiences using the app.
So we have our Xbox 360 HD DVD plugged into our system with the Toshiba HD DVD / UFS 2.5 file system drivers going on, and are able to read the directory contents (drive G:).
So, we all know about the Live outage last night. If you didn't know about it, perhaps you heard the collective shriek of millions of fanboys screaming simultaneously. That's usually a pretty good indicator that something has gone wrong. Officially, we don't know why the outage occurred. All we know right now is that Major Nelson is sniffing around for answers. Of course, we wouldn't be fanboys if we didn't concoct a theory of our own. 360 Fanboy reader, Eric, noticed that the Shadowrun beta officially began last night. A post on the Shadowrun community forums presents and interesting twist on the outage theories:
"There are currently some issues propping the beta build to the production servers. We are trying to get the beta out tonight but it may be delayed somewhat. More information will go here as soon as it is available."
The question is, did the beta cause the Live crash, or is it just a coincidence? This is the first time a public beta has been put on Xbox Live Microsoft run beta on Xbox Live-- and Shadowrun is the first game to utilize Live Anywhere -- so it is conceivable that it could cause unforeseen problems. Hopefully Major Nelson will clear it up next week.
Speaking of the Shadowrun beta, did anyone make it into the first round?
Update: Okay, so it's not the first beta, but, to be fair, PSU was hardly a beta at all, and FFXI runs on its own servers.
So did you noticed the downtime?? Marketplace still seemed to work fine but lots of user's posted on the official xbox.com forums that they could not join or host online games...
From MajorNelson.Com:
Yup...we know.. If you’re having some issues connecting to Xbox Live, or getting into a game (matchmaking) the operations team is aware of the issues and are working on it.
I just heard from the Ops team...and we are all set now. They are debriefing now...so I'll see if I can get anything out of e to share on my show this week.
Update:
The team has informed me that everything is back online. Thank you for your patience.
I just heard from the Ops team...and we are all set now. They are debriefing now...so I'll see if I can get anything out of e to share on my show this week.
Terminator: Survivors confirmed for Xbox Series, PS5 & PC via Steam Play as a survivor in the aftermath of Judgment Day in Terminator: Survivors, a new open-world survival game by NACON (@Nacon). Build the resistance and defy the machines in Terminator: Survivors, com..
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Beginning this month, Kellogg's will insert one of five Xbox-inspired handheld mini-games in specially marked boxes of many of its popular, ready-to-eat cereals, including Kellogg’s® Apple Jacks®, Kellogg’s® Corn Pops®, and Kellogg’s® Cocoa Rice Krispies®. Collect all five mini hand-held, color background video games, developed exclusively for Kellogg. 
