Microsoft Plans Extra Security Hardware for Xbox 360

Posted on September 14, 2005

The BBC has a news story about Microsoft's security plans for the Xbox 360. According to the article Microsoft plans to have security built-in to the game system's hardware.

Shortly after the first Xbox came out, computer scientists, smart amateur engineers and others started taking it apart and creating modification chips and software for the machine to make it do things Microsoft never intended it to.
Such actions are frowned upon by the hardware manufacturers. In July last year, Sony won a court case to ban the selling of mod chips for its PlayStation 2 in the UK.
In July of this year, a 22-year-old man became the first person in the UK to be convicted for modifying a video games console.
With the 360, Microsoft is aiming to make it as hard as possible to hack.

A quote from Xbox engineer Chris Satchell reads, "There are going to be levels of security in this box that the hacker community has never seen before." Microsoft is obviously taking Xbox 360 security very seriously in an attempt to make it hacker proof or "unmodifiable" depending on your perspective. Does that mean if another comes out with an open-source gaming system will it leave the Xbox vulnerable? Possibly but probably not in the near future. The Xbox 360 will have plenty of hot new games from multiple publishers to keep players busy.

XBOX