Hacking the Xbox

The Politics of Hacking
Prologue - README.1ST 7
The introduction of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) in
1998 took cryptography out of the hacker’s domain — the law now
spells out that only researchers “engaged in a legitimate course of study,
is employed or is appropriately trained or experienced” 5 are allowed to
investigate cryptographic methods for protecting access rights to works.
As a result, Xbox hacking has been a politically charged topic. It is a
battle between hackers and lawmakers to keep cryptography within the
legal rights of hackers.
Microsoft’s laudable reaction to Xbox hackers — that is, no persecution
or attempt so far to shut down Xbox hacking projects — will hopefully
serve as a role model to others thinking about using the DMCA to stop
hacking activities. Despite all of the Xbox hacks out there, Microsoft still
enjoys robust sales of games. All of the interest and buzz generated by
Xbox hacking may have increased Microsoft’s sales more than piracy has
hurt them. (Of course, I am sympathetic with the hackers, so my interpretation
of the situation is biased. A more subjective and informed legal
analysis of reverse engineering can be found in Chapter 12, “Caveat
Hacker,” by Lee Tien of the Electronic Frontier Foundation.)
The most alarming aspect of the DMCA for hackers is that it embodies
the fallacy that the only sources of innovation of benefit to society lie
within the halls of research institutions and corporations. Suddenly, it is a
crime to explore, in the comfort of your own home in pursuit of your
hobby, the cryptographic methods used to secure access rights. Restricting
the research of such technology to only established institutions
disallows the possibility of technology development by unaffiliated
individuals. Without the freedom to research and develop technology in
their own garage, where would the likes of Bill Hewlett and Dave
Packard, or Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak be today? Would we have
Linux and netBSD if the right of hackers to express themselves freely in
code was regulated?
For every copyright protection scheme that is defeated by a hacker, there is someone
who learned an important lesson about how to make a better protection scheme. To
pass laws that regulate the research of technological measures that
protect copyrights and the dissemination of such results is to concede
that copyright technology is broken and can never be improved — that
the only possible outcome of allowing common people to understand
copyright control technology is the demise of the technology. I offer a
counter to that mindset: some of the best peer review that I received on
my Xbox hacking work did not come from the academic community. It
came from individual hackers around the world — especially in foreign
5 17 U.S.C § 1201(g)(3), Factors in determining exemption. Of
course, the meaning of “appropriately trained or experienced” is
not defined. I think that the best training for applied
cryptography research should involve some practical hands-on
experience hacking real cryptosystems.