Cheaters beware! Microsoft is getting set to cast some epic-scale voodoo on you if you keep right on hacking, glitching, and cheating to get those Gears of War 2 Achievements you're so proud of. If voodoo doesn't scare you off, they'll just whip out the banhammer.

Fans managed to hack the Japanese demo of Resident Evil 5, revealing what may be a clue to Jill Valentine's role in the game. We'll tag it rumor for now, but if you don't like possible spoilers, better not go to the full article for details.

Bet you want to. Click.

(Editor's Note: From highs and lows, and everything in between, QuickPeek 37 is going to hit you hard - and it's going to hit you good.)

Time to grab your trusty QuickPeek walking stick, because there's lots and lots of catching up to do. The gaming industry's taken the high road, and that's our cue to help you guys out. Time for the weekly roll call of the hottest items that dropped in during the past seven days! It's one heck of a landslide, folks!

Buying in-game loot using real money is illegal and frowned upon in many an MMORPG, but it still thrives nonetheless. Among the many MMORPGs that don't allow these kinds of transactions is Final Fantasy 11 Online. In their efforts to stop Real Money Transactions (RMT), they've even set up an enforcing body within the community as their Special Task Force. Read the full article for more of Square Enix's efforts to stop RMTs.

Frank Yu, former Casual Games Producer for Microsoft in China, recently gave a report on the state of piracy in China following the Hong Kong raid where authorities seized 10,000 mod chips for Nintendo consoles. The last major news of piracy in China was last year; at that time it was for the Xbox 360.

Remember our report about Xbox 360 and Wii piracy in the Philippines? Turns out piracy is popular for both the Xbox 360 and the Wii in China as well.

According to Yu though, there isn't much demand for the PlayStation 3 so there's no modding or any distribution of pirated games in China that he is aware of and he doesn't even mention the PSP, which is a popular victim in many other areas. The Nintendo DS isn't spared however, as the Supercard (R4 card) is being sold in China.

Yu states that the Japanese Wii is a more popular candidate for modding since the US Wii has more protection. Modded Wiis can still download firmware although some of the more recent games, like Metroid Prime 3: Corruption won't work (although Yu believes this won't be true for long).

As for the Xbox 360, piracy is still very much active and rampant in the country. While Xbox 360 consoles in China will still be shut out of Xbox Live when MS detects that the console is modded, Yu has heard of a rumor that talks of a mod chip you can switch on and off. One just has to turn it off to log on to Xbox Live.

Hacking and modding is rampant but also incredible efficient - so much that the "folks at MS are always impressed by the speed and workaround that hackers and modders do to the motherboard." Hacking in China is also popular with foreigners, who aren't strangers with hacking shops at all.

 

WARNING TO ALL XBOX OWNERS: There are recent reports of XBox Live subscribers receiving phishing emails, tricking them into sending their important account information - namely their login ID and password for their XBLA accounts. Of course, we all know what happens when a malicious script kiddie gets hold of someone else's account information.

Just so you know, here is an sample of the phishing email that all of you should be aware of:

Subject: Changes To Your Xbox Live Account

From: Xbox Support [support@passport.xbox.com]

Email body: "Dear Xbox Live User, We have made many changes to everyone’s Xbox Live account, and we would like you to check out the new features! You can check out the new features by click on the link below to login and check them out! Please check out your new features to your Xbox Live account!

https://www.xbox.com/signin/"

Clicking the link at the end of the email will lead to a phishing replica of the actual Passport login page. But don't be fooled, instead of letting you log into your account, its just going to steal your login IDs and passwords.

A useful rule of thumb is to never, EVER, log in through any emails or links sent by email. Make sure you only log in through the real site only, by checking the URL of the site before you enter your information.

 

Stemming up from a few Xbox tech sources is a claim from the Xboxhacker (XBH) Forums stating that the Xbox 360's DVD key and game region code can be altered to break down the region locks for some games. And following that particular tip by XBH member Seventhson, a flurry of third-party experimentations are beginning to back the claim in its entirety.

"I successfully changed the DVD key and region code of a 360. So it's all confirmed. ... All I did towards this was to reverse the plaintext KV signature to figure out how to modify and resign the KV contents," said Seventhson in his post, assuring that he isn't here to claim fame for this find.

He has stated that this triumph was built upon works of other Xbox hackers and wishes to thank four others - Takires, TheSpecialist, Robinsod, tmbinc - for their region code tests and SHA1/RC5 documentation. But it appears that the patch only works for some versions of Xbox 360s, which include all those with exploitable Hypervisors (kernels 4532 and 4548).

Meanwhile, one other Xboxhacker contributor going by the name of Arakon has successfully loaded a region-locked game, stating, "My USA 360 just booted a PAL (non-region-free) game. The region patching works."

Call this recommended reading: not really hard Xbox 360 news, but interesting to know about anyhow. bunnie Huang has a well-written story up on his blog about what happens when hackers and Microsoft security designers meet at The Spring Microsoft BlueHat Security Briefing 2007.

Dinart Morais (whose initials are "DRM" and is the designer of Xbox 360 security), Michael Steil, Felix Domke, Robert "RSnake" Hansen, David Maynor, Robert Graham, Kevin Mahaffey, John Hering, Rob Thomas and bunnie Huang of Bunnie Studios were there to talk about things regarding breaking into Microsoft Security.

Sessions had titles like: Death by 1,000 Cuts, Breaking and Breaking Into Microsoft Security Tools, Emerging Mobile Security Problems or How We Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Windows Mobile, and Your Tamper-Resistant Hardware Makes a Great Sport for Hackers.

See? Interesting stuff.

It was reported that Microsoft was very receptive when it comes to working with hackers when it comes to fixing found vulnerabilities and exploits before they are published. It was noted that ultimately the event was a "constructive exercise" for all the involved parties.

Read more about the Microsoft BlueHat Security Briefings here, and for bunnie Huang's account of the event - which includes images of mock executions - feel free to head to his post via our read-link below.

You've probably heard enough about the just-released Spring Dashboard update already (Previous coverage: here, here and here), so we won't bore you guys with any more duplicate coverage. If you've been under a large rock all this while, our previous coverages will bring you up to speed with the latest happenings regarding the Dashboard update. The update brings a lot of great new features making your Xbox 360 experience that much more enjoyable.

Anyways, the main reason for this article is to douse the suspense surrounding the fate of people who've modified their DVD drives with a hacked firmware to play pirated games, err backups. This might sound surprising: the latest Dashboard update doesn't mess with hacked DVD drives; meaning that if you've modified your DVD drive firmware, you'll still be safe with the latest update. People having Hitachi drives haven't been lucky enough to get regular updates to the hacked firmware, but even that doesn't matter, they're safe too!

While this doesn't rule out the possibility that Microsoft might be collecting data regarding these hacked drives and waiting to do something a little later, it's safe to say that's close to being improbable. Hackers, like Commodore4Eva, have made claims that they have complete control over the DVD drive and that Microsoft can't really do anything with it. Even though Microsoft might have something up their sleeve, it would be pretty risky to do something now.

In related news, Commodore4Eva has also announced that he is working on an Xtreme Firmware v2.4 for Hitachi users which would include the latest Disc Jitter update recently packed in Xtreme 5.3 for Samsung drives. We'll keep you posted on C4E's work, stay tuned.

Microsoft recently admitted to being a victim of hacking through social engineering. Social engineering is defined as "a collection of techniques used to manipulate people into performing actions or divulging confidential information" (Wikipedia). The company's phone support staff released the account details of some Xbox Live users to some callers. As a result, some users were charged with purchases they did not make.

Security experts from Australia believe that this is not an isolated case. Gamers are being warned that they are one of the new high profile targets this year. MacLeonard Starkey, a security analyst for Australia's Computer Emergency Response Team (Auscert), said, "I haven't seen [sic] any malicious code that is specifically designed to run on a PlayStation 3 or an Xbox but I would expect (it) is not very far away at all."

He further elaborated on this, citing the attacks on MMORPG gamers. "We're seeing an awful lot of malicious code that will specifically target online games for the purposes of capturing user names and passwords." He stressed the financial ramifications of the incidents saying that these "thieves" can log in and steal the items collected by the players over a course of time. "There's actually some pretty good money in that," he added.
 
However, not everyone sees the threat as inherently malicious. The director of product management at security software maker CA 1, Stefana Muller, believes that the attacks on gaming payment systems and less damaging "proof-of-concept" hacks will be done to show off a hackers proficiency than for monetary gain.

She gave her take on the matter. "I think it's going to be an 'I did it' kind of target, 'I got to exploit this gaming console'. It's obvious that once a new thing comes out, if it's cool, it will be exploited."