4 ms·

Analyzing Xbox serial numbers

65 points by unwind 16y ago

duck 16y ago
This makes me want to look at serial numbers for all my stuff.
mrcharles 16y ago
This would be far more interesting if it were finding out information that wasn't already known.
- gyardley 16y ago
  A friend of mine ran a team at a financial institution that did stuff like this every day. For instance, looking for sequential transaction numbers on large e-commerce sites to estimate sales. This particular bit of research sounds like it then could be used (in conjunction with some ongoing data-gathering) to predict sales / units manufactured in advance of Microsoft's quarterly reports. That type of information is very valuable to the right parties, which is why my friend's team was quite highly paid.
m_eiman 16y ago
When I start building stuff, I'm going to make the serial number random and keep a database with serial<>manufacturing data. All to keep my Evil Competitors from gleaning any useful information!
- codebaobab 16y ago
  You don't need a database, just a mapping function and a seed. I haven't seen anyone else do this, but I worked out a solution a while back.
  - m_eiman 16y ago
    It'd need to be a symmetric function that appears at least pseudo-random, any suggestions for suitable candidates? But I'd probably have a database with assorted data about the production anyway, so adding a random serial number wouldn't make much of a practical difference.
    - a1k0n 16y ago
      Any symmetric cipher (e.g. DES, AES, Blowfish, countless others) would work.
      - m_eiman 16y ago
        Ah, of course!
mcritz 16y ago
I was bored until the author referenced German Tanks.
LoonyPandora 16y ago
Sounds quite similar to the serial number format used on Apple products until recently. First 2 characters were the country / factory of manufacture, 3rd digit was the year, 4th and 5th were the week. The next three were the machines actual unique serial number, and the final three were a model identifier. Seems to be pretty common to store this information in "plain text" in the serial number. I'm sure it has advantages over just giving every product a UUID and having a lookup in a database somewhere, perhaps in doing product recalls - you can specify a range of numbers that are affected?

65 points by unwind 16y ago

duck 16y ago

This makes me want to look at serial numbers for all my stuff.

mrcharles 16y ago

This would be far more interesting if it were finding out information that wasn't already known.

gyardley 16y ago
A friend of mine ran a team at a financial institution that did stuff like this every day. For instance, looking for sequential transaction numbers on large e-commerce sites to estimate sales. This particular bit of research sounds like it then could be used (in conjunction with some ongoing data-gathering) to predict sales / units manufactured in advance of Microsoft's quarterly reports. That type of information is very valuable to the right parties, which is why my friend's team was quite highly paid.

m_eiman 16y ago

When I start building stuff, I'm going to make the serial number random and keep a database with serial<>manufacturing data. All to keep my Evil Competitors from gleaning any useful information!

codebaobab 16y ago
You don't need a database, just a mapping function and a seed. I haven't seen anyone else do this, but I worked out a solution a while back.
- m_eiman 16y ago
  It'd need to be a symmetric function that appears at least pseudo-random, any suggestions for suitable candidates? But I'd probably have a database with assorted data about the production anyway, so adding a random serial number wouldn't make much of a practical difference.
  - a1k0n 16y ago
    Any symmetric cipher (e.g. DES, AES, Blowfish, countless others) would work.
    - m_eiman 16y ago
      Ah, of course!

mcritz 16y ago

I was bored until the author referenced German Tanks.

LoonyPandora 16y ago

Sounds quite similar to the serial number format used on Apple products until recently. First 2 characters were the country / factory of manufacture, 3rd digit was the year, 4th and 5th were the week. The next three were the machines actual unique serial number, and the final three were a model identifier. Seems to be pretty common to store this information in "plain text" in the serial number. I'm sure it has advantages over just giving every product a UUID and having a lookup in a database somewhere, perhaps in doing product recalls - you can specify a range of numbers that are affected?