We're letting the readers know about the release of vmcNetFlix Beta v1.0.22, a plugin that will enable you to stream Netflix movies from your Vista Premium Media Center PC to your Xbox 360. Further details on its features are available in the full article.



Download: vmcNetFlix Beta v1.0.22 (x86)
Download: vmcNetFlix Beta v1.0.22 (x64)

Xbox 360 owners who are closely following the project developments of the InFeCtuS homebrew developer team, be informed that the group has just released a new build for the Programmer bumping it up to version 0.0.3.9. Know about its details after the jump!

If you want to have Xbox Live access while on the go, maybe you would like to try the homebrew application called iXboxLive from coder NPike. It is to be used on platforms iPhone and iPod Touch and is currently on version 1.6.

Prior to this release, there have been two other builds for the program. To see all its features as well as those being planned by the owner, you can proceed to the full article via the "read more" link below.

Download: iXboxLive v1.6

It's been a very, very long since since we've last heard news on Xplorer360, so we'll be starting with a brief recap. For the Xbox 360 console owners hearing this for the first time, Xplorer360 is a file management system for your 360's HDD, and allows you to read/write on your Xbox/Xbox360 HDD and Xbox360 memory cards on PC.

This latest version (Beta 6) will carry two minor updates that appear to be a response to Microsoft's recent HDD and Elite releases: Support for 120GB HDDs, and 512MB memory cards. That's all to report today - keep in touch in case the Xplorer360 team updates in the near future.

Download: Xplorer360 Beta 6

The team of tmbinc, Cpasjuste, stonersmurf and the rest of free60.org, who've been furiously at work porting Linux to Microsoft's Xbox 360 have just made two big releases getting us closer to the dream of having a full-blown Linux distro on our 360.

First, the Free60.org team released X.org drivers for the Xbox 360 hardware called xenosfb. X.org is the implementation of X Window System, the software used by Linux to render graphical user interfaces. This means that once distros incorporate these drivers into themselves, you can run these distros with better graphical compatibility, including higher resolution support.

And the second release is what I just talked about. Cpasjuste has released a Gentoo LiveCD (Full version - 608 MB) with these new drivers built into it. This means that you will be able to run the LiveCD with the GUI and with a lot more compatibility. The livecd uses the xenosfb drivers, plus it includes a powerpc toolchain so that you can compile and build applications on the 360 itself, without having to cross-compile applications on your PC and then transferring them to the 360. The Gentoo LiveCD contains the Gnome Desktop Environment.

Firstly, here's what the Free60.org team had to say about their new drivers:

X.org driver and a new LiveCD No April Fools' Day joke. We have released a preliminary X.org driver and Cpasjuste has built a new LiveCD which makes use of it. Unfortunately, support for Samsung drives and sound drivers are still missing.

The full article awaits after the jump!

In the short time between the first usable exploit for Xbox 360 consoles and today, we've already seen a lot of great achievements by people like tmbinc, Cpasjuste, and others. A few hours ago, a new shader exploit using the King Kong game was announced which will allow people to load XeLL and subsequently, any Linux distro without needing a serial connection with a PC.

This patch will modify the King Kong ISO to include a modified shader which will trigger the exploit. Once triggered, the exploit code will automatically eject the King Kong DVD. Just insert Cpasjuste's modified version of the Gentoo minimal LiveCD. Wait for a few seconds and it should boot right into a minimal Gentoo environment. While its only command line mode for now, you should expect a user-friendly distro like Ubuntu to be released after the necessary patches are applied.

In short, these are the things you will need:

• An Xbox 360 with an older kernel (4532 or 4548). Anything above that will not be affected by the exploit.
• A hacked DVDROM drive in the Xbox 360 so that burnt discs can be run.
• An ISO of the game King Kong (dumped by yourself hopefully, we don't encourage the use of warez)
• An ISO of the Gentoo minimal LiveCD (gentoo-xenon-minimal-2006.1.iso)
• The patcher to patch the King Kong ISO.

All in all, these things will make sure that you have a usable Linux environment on your Xbox 360. Finally, I'd personally like to thank everyone involved in this effort to make it what it is today (Felix "tmbinc" Domke, Cpasjuste, stonersmurf, xorloser and the whole free60.org team), we love you!

Anyways, here's the links for the relevant stuff. If something is considered illegal, it won't be hosted on our servers. Same goes with stuff which is in the grey area concerning its legality. As for the Gentoo ISO, we feel that we should link directly to sourceforge since the ISO will be updated quite frequently.

Download Link: King Kong Shader exploit for XeLL
Download Link: Gentoo Linux Xenon minimal LiveCD (Sourceforge Link. Click on gentoo-xenon-minimal-2006.1.iso on that page to download)
Link: King Kong Shader Exploit for the XELL Loader readme
Link: Gentoo Linux Xenon minimal-2006.1 readme

If a Linux-PPC developers' mailing list is anything to go by, we might soon be looking at Linux running on our beloved Xbox360. This big news comes after other huge developments in the last fortnight or so...

First, we had the hypervisor vulnerability, which led to the first Proof of Concept Hello World homebrew code, after which we had news of a MAME emulator in the works (which should hopefully work on retail hacked 360s), and now we have news that people have been busy writing patches to get the Xbox360 to run Linux. Here's the announcement in the mailing list:

This series of patches add support for the Xbox 360 gaming console.

Note that these patches were written by different people, who want to remain anonymous. These drivers were written without hardware documentation being available.

There are probably more than some rough edges. Please comment and/or provide patches.

To actually run this, you need a special loader which exploits the recently announced vulnerability. This loader was developed seperately and should be available soon.

thanks,
Felix

Now if you're wondering if this might be fake, don't worry... Felix Domke has been in the news in the past not only in the GameCube homebrew scene, but a quick Google Search for his name shows many credible pages about him.

As for details about the patch, it is built against the Linux 2.6.20 Linux PPC kernel which has been running flawlessly on PS3 Linux distros as well. As noted previously, your Xbox360's kernel version will have to be one of the affected ones, namely, 4532 or 4548. For people having the newest kernel (4552), there doesn't seem to be a solution in sight since downgrading is currently not possible by even an external flasher.

This news, after the earlier huge announcements, shows that the homebrew/hacking scene is starting to get on a roll. We can only hope that it keeps going like this for some time to come. Stay tuned for the latest updates!

It's just been a little less than a week since the hypervisor vulnerability was first reported. In the short time between that and today, we've already seen a "Hello World" Proof of Concept being released. And today, we have a few bits of info about the first emulator for the Xbox 360. This anonymous developer was kind enough to send a few screenshots and describe what he has been up to.

First, a few screenshots:

     

Here's what he said about his project:

In light of the recent 360 hack and possibility of widespread homebrew in the future, I wanted to share some news with you and X-S.

I've been working on a port of MAME to the 360. I call it 'MAME360'.

Now for a bit about the project:

• It's based on MAME 0.112 and is fairly easy to keep up-to-date (doesn't need any messing around with like Mameox on the xbox).
• Originally it was based on SDLMAME but I've since ported a 360 specific osd layer (so SDL for the 360 exists - as an aside I also have a port of ScummVM in the works too).
• Mame doesn't include any dynarec cpu emulation on anything other than an x86 platform. So any game that is PSX or N64 based for example doesn't run at all well.
• Most other stuff (that I've tried) runs pretty well.
• At the moment it will only run on 360 dev/debug/test kits. Whether it will ever run on a hacked retail box remains to be seen.

Since there isn't much of a difference when you run code on a debug kit and a hacked retail box, it is possible that if the hypervisor vulnerability is fully exploited, it will open up the Xbox360 to a lot of homebrew. Personally, I can't wait for this to show up and be possible to run it on retail boxes as homebrew.

With regards to the big news this week about the hypervisor vulnerability, it was only a matter of time before someone decided to create a Proof-Of-Concept exploit which exploited the vulnerability. And that's exactly what seems to have happened - a relative unknown, crawler360, has released what would be the first homebrew program on the 360. At this point, the code's pretty basic, printing out "Hello World" and opening up the Serial interface so that you can communicate with the 360 through your PC.

This exploit code hides itself inside the shader files in the game King Kong. It was probably a mistake by the creators and Microsoft to leave out a hole which allowed you to edit the shader files and not worry about breaking the signature. This exploit basically crashes the 360, then takes control of the hypervisor to make it jump to a piece of code which isn't signed.

What this means is that today, the unsigned piece of code is a simple "Hello World" app; next week, that piece of code could be a kernel and memory dumper which would dump contents of the RAM through the serial port. Once the hackers have a good look at the innards of the processes, it becomes much more easier to pin-point vulnerabilities.

While I won't go around speculating about the future, it does hold a lot of importance since it's probably the only place where hackers are sure to get quick results. The released proof-of-concept is only for experienced users who know their way around a 360. You'll need to compile the code since it's open source, then you'll have to get a serial connection going between the 360 and your PC - quite a difficult task.

You'll still need one of the older kernels to run the POC since the latest kernel (4552) has this vulnerability patched. With no way to downgrade yet, it's up to the few lucky people with older kernels to try and make the most of this. Apart from that, you'll have to have a hacked DVD drive so that you can run a modified version of the King Kong game with the hacked shaders.

We've attached the POC if anyone's curious. Hack away! Remember to read the README file for instructions.

Download: crawler360's Hello World POC for the 360

Over at the Team BlackBolt website, EqUiNoX released XPR Express v1.0.1, an application allowing people to sample their favorite XPR themes through the use of the XPR Express tool. XPR Express enables users to extract unprotected XPR texture files or browse protected XPRs. The application also lets you create your own XPR files using its own set of various options.

Before anything else, we'd like to remind potential users of the application to make sure they have Microsoft's .Net Framework v2.0 to run the app, or you'll get a notice saying it requires it. In any case, here's the list of fixes to this version of the application:

• Fixed: Internal special edition of XBMCTex enhanced to allow for GIF's containing local pallettes.
• Fixed: Extraction progress bar was hidden.
• Fixed: Gif animation preview works with frames now with 0 delay.

Download: XPR Express v1.0.1