6 ms·

One should never call something "unhackable" ...

Arainach 7mo ago
Given that it held up against 13 years of dedicated efforts by people with physical access to the device, many years after its successor was launched, it seems merited in this case. This talk about some of what went into it is fascinating: https://youtu.be/quLa6kzzra0 https://youtu.be/quLa6kzzra0
- WJW 7mo ago
  It literally got hacked, that's what the article is about. It is NOT unhackable.
  - ralfd 7mo ago
    Microsoft stopped manufacturing in 2020. It was not hacked in its lifetime.
    - lokar 7mo ago
      I agree, but also find it funny that by that standard the DRM in the original Google video streaming product was not hacked before the service was shutdown, after about 2 years :)
      - leoc 7mo ago
        And to think that sometimes people doubt the wisdom of Google’s product-lifecycle decisions!
  - max-m 7mo ago
    To the community it was unhackable, until very recently. It's security measures held up so long that it appeared to be unshakable. There were no obvious flaws. In hindsight it was hackable, but keep in mind how long it took. This console has long been obsoleted.
  - Brian_K_White 7mo ago
    It was unhackable while it mattered. It was hacked 5 years after it no longer mattered. And all but the effectively beta release remain unhacked even now.
- devmor 7mo ago
  "Extremely hard to hack" or "Hackable only after it's retired" don't exactly roll off the tongue, but they are not synonymous with "Unhackable". In many cases the truth is simply that its not worth the time/effort to hack it, so only the most dedicated perverts(with a positive connotation) keep trying.
joe_mamba 7mo ago
I wish people would take statements in relative terms along with the whole context before attempting to refute them with a quick gotcha in absolute terms. Obviously nothing is ever unhackable, not even Fort Knox, given infinite time and resources, and Microsoft never made such claims, this is just media editorializing for clicks and HN eating the bait, but Xbox One was definitely the most unhackable console of its generation. Case in point, it took 13 years of constant community effort to hack a 499$ consumer device from 2013. PS4 and iPhones of 2013 have also been jailbroken long ago. Therefore, even the click-bait statement with context in relative terms is 100% correct, it truly was unhackable during the time it was sold and relative to its peers of the time.
- devmor 7mo ago
  > Case in point, it took 13 years of constant community effort to hack it. Can you attempt to quantify this effort in comparison to other game consoles? I'm not very familiar with the Xbox scene, but I would assume that there was a lot less drive to achieve this given that Xbox has never really had many big exclusive titles and remains the least popular major console (with an abysmally tiny market presence outside of the US). As an aside, I wonder if Microsoft's extra effort into securing the platform comes from their tighter partnership with media distributors/streaming platforms and their off-and-on demonstrated desire to position the Xbox as a home media center more than just a gaming console.
  - joe_mamba 7mo ago
    >and remains the least popular major console (with an abysmally tiny market presence outside of the US). TF are you on about? The xbox one of 2013(competitor of the PS4 who got hacked long before) had a ~46% market share in the US and ~35% globally. Hardly insignificant. And any Microsoft Product, even those with much lower market share, attracts significant attention from hackers since it's worth a lot in street-cred, plus the case of reusing cheap consoles as general PCs for compute since HW used to be subsidized. And of course for piracy, game preservation and homebrew reasons. I again tap the sign of my previous comment, of uring people to stop jumping the gun to talk out of their ass, without knowing and considering the full context.
close04 7mo ago
In the very strict interpretation probably nothing is unhackable, just not hacked yet. But one should also be pragmatic about what "unhackable" means in context. Without the power of hindsight, a consumer device that stayed unhacked for ~13 years can be reasonably called unhackable during this time.
- mikkupikku 7mo ago
  I think it's like calling a ship "unsinkable". Yes, you engineered it to not sink, in accordance with strict maritime standards no doubt, but just don't call it unsinkable. If you call it unsinkable you're just begging for a century of snickering at your hubris.
  - applfanboysbgon 7mo ago
    It has no relation to hubris whatsoever if the "unhackable" label is not something self-proclaimed at launch but something descriptively applied by other people who were unable to hack it. Nobody would have snickered if the Titanic were described as unsinkable by people who had been trying to sink it for 10 years.
    - inetknght 7mo ago
      > Nobody would have snickered if the Titanic were described as unsinkable by people who had been trying to sink it for 10 years. Pedantic: I'm sure somebody would have snickered about "unsinkable" if the Titanic sank after 10 years. Pragmatic: if the "unsinkable" Titanic lasted 10 years (or at least to profitability) before being sunk by people intending to sink it, that might certainly count as being "unsinkable" for the time it hadn't sunk. Hubris: Titanic was claimed to be unsinkable before it was launched.
      - jacquesm 7mo ago
        And they believed their own bullshit.
- 7mo ago

Given that it held up against 13 years of dedicated efforts by people with physical access to the device, many years after its successor was launched, it seems merited in this case. This talk about some of what went into it is fascinating: https://youtu.be/quLa6kzzra0 https://youtu.be/quLa6kzzra0

WJW 7mo ago
It literally got hacked, that's what the article is about. It is NOT unhackable.
- ralfd 7mo ago
  Microsoft stopped manufacturing in 2020. It was not hacked in its lifetime.
  - lokar 7mo ago
    I agree, but also find it funny that by that standard the DRM in the original Google video streaming product was not hacked before the service was shutdown, after about 2 years :)
    - leoc 7mo ago
      And to think that sometimes people doubt the wisdom of Google’s product-lifecycle decisions!
- max-m 7mo ago
  To the community it was unhackable, until very recently. It's security measures held up so long that it appeared to be unshakable. There were no obvious flaws. In hindsight it was hackable, but keep in mind how long it took. This console has long been obsoleted.
- Brian_K_White 7mo ago
  It was unhackable while it mattered. It was hacked 5 years after it no longer mattered. And all but the effectively beta release remain unhacked even now.
devmor 7mo ago
"Extremely hard to hack" or "Hackable only after it's retired" don't exactly roll off the tongue, but they are not synonymous with "Unhackable". In many cases the truth is simply that its not worth the time/effort to hack it, so only the most dedicated perverts(with a positive connotation) keep trying.

joe_mamba 7mo ago

I wish people would take statements in relative terms along with the whole context before attempting to refute them with a quick gotcha in absolute terms. Obviously nothing is ever unhackable, not even Fort Knox, given infinite time and resources, and Microsoft never made such claims, this is just media editorializing for clicks and HN eating the bait, but Xbox One was definitely the most unhackable console of its generation. Case in point, it took 13 years of constant community effort to hack a 499$ consumer device from 2013. PS4 and iPhones of 2013 have also been jailbroken long ago. Therefore, even the click-bait statement with context in relative terms is 100% correct, it truly was unhackable during the time it was sold and relative to its peers of the time.

devmor 7mo ago
> Case in point, it took 13 years of constant community effort to hack it. Can you attempt to quantify this effort in comparison to other game consoles? I'm not very familiar with the Xbox scene, but I would assume that there was a lot less drive to achieve this given that Xbox has never really had many big exclusive titles and remains the least popular major console (with an abysmally tiny market presence outside of the US). As an aside, I wonder if Microsoft's extra effort into securing the platform comes from their tighter partnership with media distributors/streaming platforms and their off-and-on demonstrated desire to position the Xbox as a home media center more than just a gaming console.
- joe_mamba 7mo ago
  >and remains the least popular major console (with an abysmally tiny market presence outside of the US). TF are you on about? The xbox one of 2013(competitor of the PS4 who got hacked long before) had a ~46% market share in the US and ~35% globally. Hardly insignificant. And any Microsoft Product, even those with much lower market share, attracts significant attention from hackers since it's worth a lot in street-cred, plus the case of reusing cheap consoles as general PCs for compute since HW used to be subsidized. And of course for piracy, game preservation and homebrew reasons. I again tap the sign of my previous comment, of uring people to stop jumping the gun to talk out of their ass, without knowing and considering the full context.

close04 7mo ago

In the very strict interpretation probably nothing is unhackable, just not hacked yet. But one should also be pragmatic about what "unhackable" means in context. Without the power of hindsight, a consumer device that stayed unhacked for ~13 years can be reasonably called unhackable during this time.

mikkupikku 7mo ago
I think it's like calling a ship "unsinkable". Yes, you engineered it to not sink, in accordance with strict maritime standards no doubt, but just don't call it unsinkable. If you call it unsinkable you're just begging for a century of snickering at your hubris.
- applfanboysbgon 7mo ago
  It has no relation to hubris whatsoever if the "unhackable" label is not something self-proclaimed at launch but something descriptively applied by other people who were unable to hack it. Nobody would have snickered if the Titanic were described as unsinkable by people who had been trying to sink it for 10 years.
  - inetknght 7mo ago
    > Nobody would have snickered if the Titanic were described as unsinkable by people who had been trying to sink it for 10 years. Pedantic: I'm sure somebody would have snickered about "unsinkable" if the Titanic sank after 10 years. Pragmatic: if the "unsinkable" Titanic lasted 10 years (or at least to profitability) before being sunk by people intending to sink it, that might certainly count as being "unsinkable" for the time it hadn't sunk. Hubris: Titanic was claimed to be unsinkable before it was launched.
    - jacquesm 7mo ago
      And they believed their own bullshit.
7mo ago