00:00:00
JACK: I kind of want to start the
show with you just talking about how
00:00:04
the original Xbox got hacked.
BUNNIE: Mm-hm. Sure.
00:00:07
JACK: This is bunnie, or at least
bunnie is his hacker handle. Back in
00:00:12
2003 he published a book called Hacking the
Xbox just after graduating from MIT.
00:00:16
BUNNIE: Yeah, I was in MIT as a
grad student at the time.
00:00:19
JACK: Oh, and just as a random fact here, the term
‘hacker’ actually emerged from the MIT Tech Model
00:00:24
Railroad Club in the 1960s and that ethos sort of
paved the way for the hacker culture today. They
00:00:30
were hacking model railroad sets to make them do
things they weren’t intended to do, and bunnie fit
00:00:35
right in with this hacker culture at MIT.
BUNNIE: Basically, every toy, every game console
00:00:40
I had gotten since childhood, I had always
taken apart. If I got tired of playing the game,
00:00:46
I would just change the resources in the game and
get the highest score or whatever it is. It was
00:00:51
more fun to sort of hack the games than it was to
play the game itself, is the bottom line.
00:00:55
JACK: Around this time, the original Xbox
came out. Bunnie got ahold of one and found
00:01:00
it had high-end computing parts in it.
BUNNIE: When I took it apart, it was very
00:01:03
clearly a PC to me on the inside. Being able to
run my own code on it, put Linux on it, to make
00:01:12
the game do what I want to do, right, was just
a natural impulse to me. If you paid whatever,
00:01:18
$300 it was at the time for this thing, that’s not
a small amount of money particularly to a student,
00:01:24
and then you’re told that you can’t use it for
what you want to use it for. Like, what if I’m
00:01:27
done playing games? I need a computer to write
my paper. This is ridiculous. That’s the feeling
00:01:34
that ran through my blood at the time.
JACK: That’s the goal. Bunnie owned an Xbox
00:01:39
which had all these parts that a computer would
have, and he wanted to use it like a PC.
00:01:43
BUNNIE: It was basically a high-end PC. It should
be able to run my word processing software,
00:01:48
or I should be able to just tell it to
boot to a shell or something like that
00:01:51
so I can do what I want with it. It seemed
like a reasonable prospect to me.
00:01:56
JACK: He tried to put his own software on it
but there was a problem. It wouldn’t run.
00:02:01
BUNNIE: The firmware image needed to be signed,
encrypted to a key, and the key was not known,
00:02:08
obviously, to the people who didn’t
have it. I couldn’t put my own code
00:02:14
in there unless I had that key.
JACK: Challenge accepted. Forget about
00:02:17
playing the games on the Xbox; the game
now was to find this key and somehow
00:02:21
make it so he can run his own software.
BUNNIE: Right. A bunch of people were searching
00:02:26
for it at the time. I figured they would just
crack it open but they all pointed down to this,
00:02:33
what was a hidden key that’s read from a location
inside of memory that would be mapped out after
00:02:42
you booted. The processor would wake up in
the morning, it would go to a secret location,
00:02:49
get its keys, and then it would brick over the
door, turn it into a regular wall so you couldn’t
00:02:54
find it again. Once you’re in the outside space,
none of the other exploits could figure out what
00:02:58
that key was. It was obviously hidden somewhere
in the hardware, this extra-architectural feature
00:03:04
of the Xbox. Since I was a hardware guy doing
research on hardware at the time, this played
00:03:12
into my alley so I started poking around.
JACK: [MUSIC] After a lot of research,
00:03:17
bunnie had an educated guess that this
key probably travels over a specific wire,
00:03:22
or bus. He tried to figure out a way to sniff
the data that was going over that bus.
00:03:27
BUNNIE: Simply put, I built a little circuit board
that could capture the data going across that bus
00:03:35
and log it to another piece of hardware that we
could use for later analysis. Then essentially,
00:03:42
as we boot the device, we could watch that
secret ROM going to the CPU and then observe
00:03:49
the key embedded inside that secret ROM.
JACK: This worked. He captured the data which
00:03:56
looked kind of like it could be a key. He tried
using the key in different ways to test some code,
00:04:02
but it wasn’t working. But then he used
the key with a certain offset and shazam,
00:04:07
the whole thing started being decrypted.
BUNNIE: I had to pinch myself. I couldn’t believe
00:04:12
it. Then I was like, this can’t be. This had to
be a mistake in the code. It couldn’t be right.
00:04:19
Then I just double-checked and double-checked. I
was like holy cow, this is it. This is the key.
00:04:23
I couldn’t believe it. I think it was like four
a.m. and my girlfriend was asleep already so I
00:04:29
wasn’t going to bother her, but I was jumping out
of my skin. I couldn’t scream and shout so I sent
00:04:35
a note into the IRC form that was on at the time,
and other people validated it that it was correct.
00:04:44
Then the next day, I saw my PHD advisor and told
him about it, and that’s when he informed me about
00:04:49
the DMCA and all the consequences that could have
happened as a result of this. I was like oh my
00:04:55
God, I didn’t even realize this was a thing. How
[00:05:00] could this even possibly be illegal for
00:05:02
me trying to run my own code on my own box?
JACK: The DMCA, or Digital Millennium Copyright
00:05:07
Act, specifically says it’s illegal to disseminate
technology in order to circumvent copyright
00:05:12
protections. But the excitement of cracking
a key on the Xbox was thrilling. Bunnie kept
00:05:18
tinkering with it and eventually got the
Xbox to run Linux, which was a victory in
00:05:22
this little game he set out to play. But now
there was this looming issue that this whole
00:05:27
thing might be illegal. Bunnie, being a good MIT
student, wanted to do the right thing.
00:05:32
BUNNIE: We want to do the whole
responsible disclosure thing,
00:05:34
like tell Microsoft about the problem, figure
out the right way to present the research,
00:05:42
that sort of stuff. For several months
it went back and forth with lawyers and
00:05:48
whatnot to try to figure out what was
the right way to disclose the research
00:05:50
without doing it irresponsibly.
JACK: Bunnie and Microsoft came to an
00:05:55
agreement. Microsoft said you can
publish your report, but…
00:05:58
BUNNIE: Basically, just don’t share the key. You
can tell how you did it and what the research
00:06:03
was and all the methods, but just don’t print
the exact key. That’s reasonable, right?
00:06:08
JACK: Bunnie started writing about how to reverse
engineer the Xbox but he had to make a choice
00:06:13
on where to stop with all this hacking.
BUNNIE: I kind of wanted to avoid anything that
00:06:18
could be perceived as unlawful, particularly
because I wanted to go public with it and I
00:06:26
wanted to share the results of the work. You can’t
really play it both ways; either you go white hat
00:06:32
or you go black hat, right? I just solidly decided
I was going to go white hat on this one.
00:06:36
JACK: One thing led to another and bunnie
ended up writing an entire book on how to
00:06:41
hack the Xbox and reverse-engineer it.
He ended up actually self-publishing
00:06:46
the book and sold it through his own website.
Guess what? It became fairly popular.
00:06:50
BUNNIE: Drive up to the post office with
this – I had this old Maxima sedan filled
00:06:55
floor-to-ceiling with books and envelopes.
They’re like oh, it’s that guy again,
00:07:00
that weirdo with the car full of books. They’d
bring out a big whatever the rolling cartons are,
00:07:07
and I would just dump it all in there.
JACK: This book inspired many hackers to learn
00:07:11
how to do this and to take
this so much further.
00:07:14
BUNNIE: I think the problem that every
technologist faces that every technology
00:07:19
is potentially dual-use. This happened with
the atomic bomb. Some people thought they could
00:07:26
create an energy source for humanity and
other people saw a weapon. I think there
00:07:31
is a responsibility the technologists to consider
potential ethical ramifications of what they do,
00:07:38
but it’s also not the place of the technologists
to deprive all of humanity because they solely
00:07:45
judged that the technology may be
used one way or the other.
00:07:48
It’s just something you have to be aware of in
a disclosure and how you educate people how to
00:07:52
use it. We then say oh, man, shouldn’t touch
fire because fire can lead to burns. It also
00:08:00
leads to cooking and heating and staying alive.
The question does keep me up a lot at night,
00:08:08
but at the end of the day, some people are gonna
do what they want to do, right? Who am I to say
00:08:14
what’s right or wrong? Over time, sometimes things
will evolve in a direction you can’t control,
00:08:21
but I think to each their own at that point
in time. There’s only so much you can do
00:08:27
to control destiny.
JACK (INTRO): [INTRO MUSIC]
00:08:36
These are true stories from
the dark side of the internet.
00:08:42
I’m Jack Rhysider. This is Darknet Diaries.
SKITZO:
00:09:02
Okay, I guess the best thing to start
is basically from the beginning.
00:09:09
JACK: Wait, wait, wait, before we get
started, what should we call you?
00:09:11
SKITZO: [00:10:00] Skitzo’s fine.
JACK: Okay. Skitzo it is. [MUSIC] Skitzo
00:09:16
was a member of the Xbox hacking crew called
Team Avalaunch. It was big in 2009. Oh, and I
00:09:21
should give a warning somewhere at the beginning
here; this episode and the next episode, they’re
00:09:25
explicit in nature. There are a lot of cuss words
in these two, and the second one gets dark. We’re
00:09:30
gonna talk about drugs and depression then, but
if you can make it through that, holy cow are you
00:09:35
in for an amazing story. It’s so amazing, I can
hardly believe any of this, except I do believe it
00:09:42
because I spent months fact-checking this as much
as possible. But it’s still unbelievable.
00:09:49
SKITZO: Jeez, Team Avalaunch is a collective
group of hackers and hardware enthusiasts,
00:09:59
let’s put it that way. The main focus
there was Xbox. There were some members
00:10:03
that ventured into different areas. You had
individuals like Lantus that was really,
00:10:11
really great with the emulation
side of things. People like Redline,
00:10:18
who could do wonders with networking, and then
you had some greed and you had some people that
00:10:23
took up space for God knows what.
JACK: The original Xbox that came out was
00:10:28
amazing. The graphics were stunning, the
games were great. Halo was my favorite,
00:10:32
of course. The AI of the enemies in that game
was just unlike anything I’ve ever seen before.
00:10:36
It was amazing. But after the Xbox was out for
a while and that initial sheen sort of wore off,
00:10:42
some people didn’t like the dashboard that came
with it. The Xbox dashboard is the menu within the
00:10:48
Xbox and it lets you pick the games you want to
play, log into Xbox Live, look at your settings,
00:10:52
that kind of stuff. The stock dashboard just
wasn’t enough for this group of hackers,
00:10:56
so they got together to try to make a better
dashboard. They wrote the software themselves
00:11:01
and then got the Xbox to play it.
This wasn’t easy to do, to hack the Xbox
00:11:05
into playing your own homemade software, but
eventually they got it. The dashboard that Team
00:11:11
Avalaunch made was pretty popular among the people
who liked modding their Xbox. Another thing this
00:11:15
group tried to do is play other games on the Xbox
like Nintendo games and PlayStation games. You
00:11:21
know what? They were doing it. They were hacking
the Xbox to play all kinds of games the Xbox was
00:11:25
not supposed to play. But really, if we take out
our moral compass here, changing the dashboard
00:11:31
and running emulators on your Xbox might be just
entering the yellow area of hacking. Yeah, it’s
00:11:37
against the terms of service and might be illegal,
but it’s not really that big of a deal for someone
00:11:41
like Microsoft to crack down on, investigate,
or hire some lawyers to go after you.
00:11:46
SKITZO: It was, you know, you want to do
this with your Xbox, you’re gonna do this
00:11:52
with your Xbox. But it was never a malicious
attack on anything. It was a hobby.
00:11:58
JACK: Team Avalaunch tinkered and toyed
with getting the Xbox to do all kinds
00:12:02
of things. When the Xbox 360 came out in
2005, they were all over that, too.
00:12:09
SKITZO: That’s more or less where I come
in. During that time of the OG Xbox scene,
00:12:15
I was more into the Sony and Dreamcast
scene. It wasn’t only until the 360 scene;
00:12:21
that’s where I came in with Team Avalaunch.
JACK: The Xbox 360 architecture was more secure
00:12:27
than the original Xbox. Remember how bunnie was
able to sniff that key off of one of the busses on
00:12:32
the Xbox? Well, the 360 made it so the key never
left the chip that it was on, making it impossible
00:12:38
to do what bunnie did. All new methods for getting
custom software to run on the Xbox had to be done.
00:12:44
Team Avalaunch figured this out and built a
custom dashboard for the 360. A few things were
00:12:49
released publically for other people to also do,
but a lot of hacking was just kept secret within
00:12:55
the group and wasn’t publically shared.
SKITZO: I mean, obviously we ruffled feathers but
00:13:00
we weren’t there to play pirated games. I mean,
obviously ultimately when the majority of people
00:13:07
that will do this want to do that, I was more than
happy playing CPS3 games and Super Nintendo games,
00:13:14
and XBMC on my OG Xbox than I was more
concerned about playing a pirated game.
00:13:23
JACK: You kinda get the feel of
what Team Avalaunch is up to,
00:13:26
right? They’re figuring out how
to mod the Xbox, take it apart,
00:13:29
make it do things it’s not supposed to do.
One of the members of Team Avalaunch was
00:13:33
named Rowdy Van Cleave. He was thirty-eight
years old, living in California.
00:13:39
SKITZO: Howdy got…
JACK: Hold on. I call him
00:13:42
Rowdy. You call him Howdy.
SKITZO: I call him Howdy.
00:13:44
JACK: Okay, but he goes by both?
SKITZO: He goes by both.
00:13:51
Howdy was at the right place at the right
time. [MUSIC] Howdy had a friend who had
00:13:57
access to a recycling facility.
JACK: This is an electronics recycling
00:14:01
facility. Computers often contain a lot of toxic
components and need to be disposed of properly.
00:14:07
Rowdy heard there were Xbox DVD drives for
sale at this facility, cheap. He went down
00:14:12
there [00:15:00] to take a look. While he was down
there, he found a couple of Xbox 360 motherboards,
00:14:17
but these looked different than what Rowdy knew
an Xbox 360 motherboard looked like. He took a
00:14:23
few of these motherboards home and popped one
into his Xbox 360 and booted it up. The words
00:14:29
that Rowdy said next were ‘holy shit, this is
a freaking dev motherboard.’ The Xbox 360 dev
00:14:37
motherboards were used by programmers themselves
to make video games for the Xbox.
00:14:40
You could only get one after Microsoft vigorously
screened you to be a legitimate developer. It
00:14:46
enabled a lot more features on the Xbox and
gave them extra access to do things. Under
00:14:51
no circumstance did Microsoft ever want these in
the hands of consumers, much less Xbox hackers.
00:14:58
They called these ‘dev kits’ and they looked,
acted, and worked just like a regular Xbox 360,
00:15:03
but with a ton more features. Rowdy knew
this and to him, this was a jackpot of a
00:15:11
find. He went back to the facility to look for
more and couldn’t believe what he saw.
00:15:16
SKITZO: There were thousands and thousands and
thousands of kits. Here, I’ll put it to you in
00:15:21
this way; I had a kit that was covered in mud.
That’s how the kit went to this facility. It was
00:15:29
covered in mud. I called it the Joe Dirt Kit.
I never cleaned it ‘cause I found it hilarious.
00:15:35
I was like, what the hell did Microsoft do to
these kits for it to be covered in mud?
00:15:39
JACK: You can imagine a fairly popular
and long-running Xbox hacking group
00:15:44
stumbling upon a find like this. It’s like
finding actual treasure. Rowdy was finding
00:15:50
complete Xboxes there, too.
SKITZO: These are complete kits set
00:15:53
to be destroyed.
JACK: Do you have any
00:15:55
idea where these were coming from?
SKITZO: Microsoft. I want to say probably
00:16:01
100% of these kits were meant to die.
JACK: When he says ‘meant to die’ he means
00:16:05
recycled, destroyed, discontinued, because maybe
Microsoft didn’t have a need for these anymore,
00:16:10
or these were returned ones,
or defective or something,
00:16:14
but Microsoft just didn’t need them
anymore and wanted them gone. [MUSIC]
00:16:22
Rowdy grabbed all that he could and started
passing them out to everyone in Team Avalaunch.
00:16:27
People didn’t take just one; you took one just to
take apart, and then you grabbed another to try
00:16:31
modding it, and then you grabbed another to see
what it was capable of on Xbox Live and stuff.
00:16:37
There were so many kits going around that
it was so easy to get multiples of them.
00:16:40
It sort of became a business for Rowdy. Not
that he really wanted to get rich off it,
00:16:45
but he wanted to put the kits in the hands of
Xbox hackers that he knew and trusted.
00:16:49
SKITZO: During that time, I got introduced
into it. Like hey, why don’t you have a
00:16:54
quick peek at what’s going on here?
JACK: Now Skitzo is stoked on getting his
00:16:58
hands on one of these. The Xbox 360 dev
kit is exactly the same as a regular Xbox,
00:17:03
just with all kinds of developer options enabled.
One of the most amazing things about owning a dev
00:17:08
kit was the ability to access PartnerNet.
SKITZO: Basically, it’s the developer
00:17:14
version of Xbox Live. All kits had a, air quotes,
‘credit card’ so you could make any profile and
00:17:24
just jump on PartnerNet and you could, if need
be, purchase Xbox Live points at that time. But
00:17:33
90% of the time, developers who put their games
up for testers to get ahold of it, or to demo,
00:17:39
and you download it. It acted exactly as
retail Xbox Live did at that time.
00:17:46
JACK: Through PartnerNet, you could potentially
see and play unreleased games or unreleased
00:17:51
patches, or unreleased add-ons for games, or
unreleased maps. It was amazing for this hacker
00:17:56
crew to all have the first peek at all this stuff.
It was like the wild west for them. While playing
00:18:02
games on it was fun and lasted a while, the hot
new game was now to hack the dev kits and to see
00:18:08
what you could get them to do.
SKITZO: The goal was basically hey,
00:18:11
how can we run code on this and what can
we do to it? That was the ultimate goal;
00:18:19
can we get an emulator running on it? Can we get
MAME on this thing? Can we get anything to XBMC,
00:18:28
things of that nature? What’s the
architect behind it? What are the limits?
00:18:33
The network presence that Microsoft took
at this time was far more advanced than
00:18:39
what the original Xbox had, with respect to
connecting on Xbox Live and things like that.
00:18:46
How was hard drive structure and the encryption?
How did Hyper-V work? It was that Pandora’s box
00:18:55
of like – to your point, how excited were you, it
wasn’t necessarily exciting getting the system but
00:19:01
getting under the hood that made it fun.
JACK: This was very exciting times for Skitzo,
00:19:06
Rowdy, and everyone on Team Avalaunch. They
knew that this was something the public was
00:19:11
never [00:20:00] meant to see and here they were,
a whole team of people, hacking away at it.
00:19:15
SKITZO: The public should never have this. It’s
the gateway into all the millions of millions of
00:19:23
dollars and manpower that you spent on securing
your system. Why don’t you tape your house key
00:19:29
to your front door when you get home? You’re
pulling the curtain behind the console, right?
00:19:35
With the right tools you can get into the console.
You can see how things load. You can do timed
00:19:39
attacks on it. You can do a number of different
things to the console, have an easier time doing
00:19:45
it than retail that’s locked up.
JACK: Around this time, Halo 3 was about
00:19:50
to be released and those who pre-ordered it
got access to the beta version a few months
00:19:55
before the release. With these DEV kits,
Skitzo and the team could play the public
00:20:00
beta version of Halo 3. Nothing really special
here, but the beta only lasted a short while,
00:20:04
just to test it, and then the game was not
playable for a few months until the official
00:20:09
release. But Team Avalaunch, using their dev
kits, figured out a way to keep playing Halo 3
00:20:15
long after the public beta was closed.
SKITZO: [MUSIC] We were able to run that
00:20:22
on PartnerNet and we were on the server
that Bungee had set up and we would play.
00:20:33
Bungee was trying to take the server down,
and Bungee had a custom welcome screen for us
00:20:41
because we kept a dev kit running called Halo
3 Dummy. Halo 3 Dummy kept that server alive
00:20:51
so we could get in and play while after the air
quotes, ‘beta time’ expired on Partners.
00:21:02
JACK: They did so much more with these dev kits,
grabbing stuff from Xbox Live and moving it to dev
00:21:07
so that they could play it as developers.
Like, you could enable things like double
00:21:11
experience points or load up special loot.
It’s like you could be a GM in many games,
00:21:16
and they played a lot of beta games and
unreleased stuff. It was great times.
00:21:23
SKITZO: [XBOX SOUNDS] It was amazing, astonishing,
00:21:29
to look back at all this stuff.
JACK: [HALO MUSIC]
00:21:32
Rowdy kept getting more kits to send to people,
and mostly these kits would only be put in the
00:21:37
hands of people in Team Avalaunch. He wanted
to keep this secret and underground.
00:21:41
SKITZO: But for a while it was
very close-knit. It was a family.
00:21:46
We were a family and I know that term is used
a lot but all good things must come to an end.
00:21:55
We had greed that started happening with
the one guy who kept getting the kits
00:22:04
and was always just for us, just for us, and
next thing you know, shit’s starting to flood
00:22:12
the market and every jackass out there with
five hundred bucks is getting a fucked-up kit.
00:22:20
The kits are getting into the hands of
people that shouldn’t have had it, and
00:22:24
you had garbage cans of human
beings getting closer to the scene.
00:22:31
Then you had the new bloods that came in
and it was just, fuck it. Just go.
00:22:38
JACK: Let’s talk about these new bloods. First,
let’s meet Dylan. Hello, can you hear me?
00:22:43
DYLAN: Yeah, can you hear me?
JACK: Yeah, I hear you.
00:22:46
DYLAN: Perfect.
JACK: This is Dylan, right?
00:22:48
DYLAN: Yeah, Dylan.
JACK: Dylan was young. In 2010, Dylan was only
00:22:54
14 years old. This is kind of what he meant by new
bloods, right? These are young kids just getting
00:22:59
in the Xbox hacker scene. Because Skitzo and Rowdy
were much older and had been in the scene for many
00:23:04
years at this point, they were like veterans. But
now young kids like Dylan are showing up, and back
00:23:10
then, Dylan’s hacker name was Dae, D-A-E.
SKITZO: Dae came around and he really didn’t give
00:23:21
a fuck. He truly did not care.
JACK: Okay, Dylan,
00:23:26
what is one of your first hacks?
DYLAN: I got suspended twice during high
00:23:31
school for actually getting into computer networks
I probably shouldn’t have gotten into.
00:23:34
JACK: Whoa.
DYLAN: I think it was the thrill of knowing what’s
00:23:40
behind doors that kind of got me into it.
JACK: Look at this recipe; a young kid,
00:23:44
doesn’t care much about the rules, loves video
games and the Xbox, loves hacking, and is hungry
00:23:49
to learn more and do something crazy. Combine
that with a high level of curiosity, and someone
00:23:55
who has always ‘on’ energy, you get Dylan.
DYLAN: I think back then it was just not knowing
00:24:01
what you can and can’t do. Just not being
told this is wrong doesn’t necessarily go
00:24:10
past a teenager’s mind, [00:25:00] so I think
I just liked the thrill of it. It was kind of
00:24:16
like a rush, it was like an adrenaline rush
every time I got into something, and seeing
00:24:23
things that I shouldn’t have seen. That’s kind
of what makes you want to do it even more.
00:24:30
JACK: Dylan was so fascinated with Xboxes, he
wanted to learn how to hack it. Yeah, he starts
00:24:35
joining Xbox hacker forums and hanging out in
the chat rooms, and getting to know who’s who
00:24:40
in the scene. There’s another person who showed up
in the Xbox hacking scene around this time, too.
00:24:46
Is Diane all set up? We ready to go?
DIANE: I just hit record.
00:24:50
SANAD: Yeah, she just hit record
so we’re good to go.
00:24:52
JACK: Let’s start out with you telling
us your name. What is your name?
00:24:58
SANAD: My name is Sanad Nesheiwat. For some
reason on my birth certificate, the doctor’s
00:25:03
messed up and put my middle name and first name
together. That’s why it says Sanadodeh Nesheiwat.
00:25:09
But it’s just Sanad.
JACK: Sanad grew up playing
00:25:12
console games, and loving them.
SANAD: Yeah, I was definitely a hardcore
00:25:16
gamer. I had Dreamcast, PlayStations. I’ve been
gaming since I was about eight years old. I
00:25:23
didn’t really get into that whole hacking thing
up until the Dreamcast came out. That’s when I
00:25:29
really started getting into things.
JACK: Sanad is a hardware guy.
00:25:33
SANAD: Well, I mean, I like taking things apart,
figuring out what they do, and trying to modify
00:25:39
them in ways that will benefit me.
JACK: When he was younger, he had a
00:25:42
soldering iron, oscilloscope, lots of chips,
electronic parts everywhere. At one point,
00:25:47
I asked him a question about electronics
and jeez, he just went off the rail,
00:25:50
crazy deep on me. Listen to this.
SANAD: What a BGA station does, is it has
00:25:55
heat plates and it shoots up hot air from the
bottom and hot air from the top. It allows you
00:26:00
to take the chip off and clean out the solder
and put brand-new solder balls on it.
00:26:06
JACK: Okay, okay. You get it, right? Sanad is
passionate about electronics. He’s a hardcore
00:26:10
gamer and he loves breaking things just to open
them up and see what’s inside, and how they work.
00:26:14
He loves Dreamcast and Xboxes, and these kind
of things. Sanad was deep in the console hacking
00:26:20
scene. At one point, he and a friend created
a launcher that would run pirated software on
00:26:24
the Xbox. But his friends started telling him
about the Xbox dev kits that were going around
00:26:29
in the scene at the time. His friends said…
SANAD: Hey, you guys can totally use dev kits to
00:26:35
make your launcher a lot smoother, and you can
debug it in real-time, and so on and so forth.
00:26:41
I was like alright, so we put together
a PayPal donation account and a bunch
00:26:48
of people donated so I was actually able to
get everybody on the team a dev kit through
00:26:52
Rowdy. That’s when I first got one.
JACK: There was something absolutely magical
00:26:58
about being a console hacker in 2010
and getting an Xbox dev kit in the mail.
00:27:03
This was something you weren’t supposed to have;
this was forbidden. Here Sanad is, opening it up,
00:27:09
eager to plug it in and play it, like it’s
a doorway to a magic kingdom. Oh, what fun
00:27:14
he could potentially have with this.
SANAD: My first dev kit, I actually bricked
00:27:19
within two hours. But luckily, I had made a
flash dump of it before even messing with it and
00:27:27
I was actually able to revive it.
JACK: Once he got it up and working again,
00:27:32
it was amazing.
SANAD: Going on PartnerNet
00:27:35
was phenomenal. Imagine going on Xbox
Live but everything that you download
00:27:41
is betas and it’s all free.
