00:00:00
JACK: I kind of want to start theĀ
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 leastĀ
bunnie is his hacker handle. Back in
00:00:12
2003 he published a book called Hacking theĀ
Xbox just after graduating from MIT.
00:00:16
BUNNIE: Yeah, I was in MIT as aĀ
grad student at the time.
00:00:19
JACK: Oh, and just as a random fact here, the termĀ
āhackerā actually emerged from the MIT Tech Model
00:00:24
Railroad Club in the 1960s and that ethos sort ofĀ
paved the way for the hacker culture today. They
00:00:30
were hacking model railroad sets to make them doĀ
things they werenāt 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 alwaysĀ
taken apart. If I got tired of playing the game,
00:00:46
I would just change the resources in the game andĀ
get the highest score or whatever it is. It was
00:00:51
more fun to sort of hack the games than it was toĀ
play the game itself, is the bottom line.
00:00:55
JACK: Around this time, the original XboxĀ
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 toĀ
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 justĀ
a natural impulse to me. If you paid whatever,
00:01:18
$300 it was at the time for this thing, thatās notĀ
a small amount of money particularly to a student,
00:01:24
and then youāre told that you canāt use it forĀ
what you want to use it for. Like, what if Iām
00:01:27
done playing games? I need a computer to writeĀ
my paper. This is ridiculous. Thatās the feeling
00:01:34
that ran through my blood at the time.
JACK: Thatās the goal. Bunnie owned an Xbox
00:01:39
which had all these parts that a computer wouldĀ
have, and he wanted to use it like a PC.
00:01:43
BUNNIE: It was basically a high-end PC. It shouldĀ
be able to run my word processing software,
00:01:48
or I should be able to just tell it toĀ
boot to a shell or something like that
00:01:51
so I can do what I want with it. It seemedĀ
like a reasonable prospect to me.
00:01:56
JACK: He tried to put his own software on itĀ
but there was a problem. It wouldnāt run.
00:02:01
BUNNIE: The firmware image needed to be signed,Ā
encrypted to a key, and the key was not known,
00:02:08
obviously, to the people who didnātĀ
have it. I couldnāt 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 gameĀ
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 justĀ
crack it open but they all pointed down to this,
00:02:33
what was a hidden key thatās read from a locationĀ
inside of memory that would be mapped out after
00:02:42
you booted. The processor would wake up inĀ
the morning, it would go to a secret location,
00:02:49
get its keys, and then it would brick over theĀ
door, turn it into a regular wall so you couldnāt
00:02:54
find it again. Once youāre in the outside space,Ā
none of the other exploits could figure out what
00:02:58
that key was. It was obviously hidden somewhereĀ
in the hardware, this extra-architectural feature
00:03:04
of the Xbox. Since I was a hardware guy doingĀ
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 thisĀ
key probably travels over a specific wire,
00:03:22
or bus. He tried to figure out a way to sniffĀ
the data that was going over that bus.
00:03:27
BUNNIE: Simply put, I built a little circuit boardĀ
that could capture the data going across that bus
00:03:35
and log it to another piece of hardware that weĀ
could use for later analysis. Then essentially,
00:03:42
as we boot the device, we could watch thatĀ
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 triedĀ
using the key in different ways to test some code,
00:04:02
but it wasnāt working. But then he usedĀ
the key with a certain offset and shazam,
00:04:07
the whole thing started being decrypted.
BUNNIE: I had to pinch myself. I couldnāt believe
00:04:12
it. Then I was like, this canāt be. This had toĀ
be a mistake in the code. It couldnāt be right.
00:04:19
Then I just double-checked and double-checked. IĀ
was like holy cow, this is it. This is the key.
00:04:23
I couldnāt believe it. I think it was like fourĀ
a.m. and my girlfriend was asleep already so I
00:04:29
wasnāt going to bother her, but I was jumping outĀ
of my skin. I couldnāt scream and shout so I sent
00:04:35
a note into the IRC form that was on at the time,Ā
and other people validated it that it was correct.
00:04:44
Then the next day, I saw my PHD advisor and toldĀ
him about it, and thatās when he informed me about
00:04:49
the DMCA and all the consequences that could haveĀ
happened as a result of this. I was like oh my
00:04:55
God, I didnāt even realize this was a thing. HowĀ
[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 itās illegal to disseminateĀ
technology in order to circumvent copyright
00:05:12
protections. But the excitement of crackingĀ
a key on the Xbox was thrilling. Bunnie kept
00:05:18
tinkering with it and eventually got theĀ
Xbox to run Linux, which was a victory in
00:05:22
this little game he set out to play. But nowĀ
there was this looming issue that this whole
00:05:27
thing might be illegal. Bunnie, being a good MITĀ
student, wanted to do the right thing.
00:05:32
BUNNIE: We want to do the wholeĀ
responsible disclosure thing,
00:05:34
like tell Microsoft about the problem, figureĀ
out the right way to present the research,
00:05:42
that sort of stuff. For several monthsĀ
it went back and forth with lawyers and
00:05:48
whatnot to try to figure out what wasĀ
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 canĀ
publish your report, butā¦
00:05:58
BUNNIE: Basically, just donāt share the key. YouĀ
can tell how you did it and what the research
00:06:03
was and all the methods, but just donāt printĀ
the exact key. Thatās reasonable, right?
00:06:08
JACK: Bunnie started writing about how to reverseĀ
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, particularlyĀ
because I wanted to go public with it and I
00:06:26
wanted to share the results of the work. You canātĀ
really play it both ways; either you go white hat
00:06:32
or you go black hat, right? I just solidly decidedĀ
I was going to go white hat on this one.
00:06:36
JACK: One thing led to another and bunnieĀ
ended up writing an entire book on how to
00:06:41
hack the Xbox and reverse-engineer it.Ā
He ended up actually self-publishing
00:06:46
the book and sold it through his own website.Ā
Guess what? It became fairly popular.
00:06:50
BUNNIE: Drive up to the post office withĀ
this ā I had this old Maxima sedan filled
00:06:55
floor-to-ceiling with books and envelopes.Ā
Theyāre like oh, itās that guy again,
00:07:00
that weirdo with the car full of books. TheyādĀ
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 takeĀ
this so much further.
00:07:14
BUNNIE: I think the problem that everyĀ
technologist faces that every technology
00:07:19
is potentially dual-use. This happened withĀ
the atomic bomb. Some people thought they could
00:07:26
create an energy source for humanity andĀ
other people saw a weapon. I think there
00:07:31
is a responsibility the technologists to considerĀ
potential ethical ramifications of what they do,
00:07:38
but itās also not the place of the technologistsĀ
to deprive all of humanity because they solely
00:07:45
judged that the technology may beĀ
used one way or the other.
00:07:48
Itās just something you have to be aware of inĀ
a disclosure and how you educate people how to
00:07:52
use it. We then say oh, man, shouldnāt touchĀ
fire because fire can lead to burns. It also
00:08:00
leads to cooking and heating and staying alive.Ā
The question does keep me up a lot at night,
00:08:08
but at the end of the day, some people are gonnaĀ
do what they want to do, right? Who am I to say
00:08:14
whatās right or wrong? Over time, sometimes thingsĀ
will evolve in a direction you canāt control,
00:08:21
but I think to each their own at that pointĀ
in time. Thereās only so much you can do
00:08:27
to control destiny.
JACK (INTRO): [INTRO MUSIC]
00:08:36
These are true stories fromĀ
the dark side of the internet.
00:08:42
Iām Jack Rhysider. This is Darknet Diaries.
SKITZO:
00:09:02
Okay, I guess the best thing to startĀ
is basically from the beginning.
00:09:09
JACK: Wait, wait, wait, before we getĀ
started, what should we call you?
00:09:11
SKITZO: [00:10:00] Skitzoās fine.
JACK: Okay. Skitzo it is. [MUSIC] Skitzo
00:09:16
was a member of the Xbox hacking crew calledĀ
Team Avalaunch. It was big in 2009. Oh, and I
00:09:21
should give a warning somewhere at the beginningĀ
here; this episode and the next episode, theyāre
00:09:25
explicit in nature. There are a lot of cuss wordsĀ
in these two, and the second one gets dark. Weāre
00:09:30
gonna talk about drugs and depression then, butĀ
if you can make it through that, holy cow are you
00:09:35
in for an amazing story. Itās so amazing, I canĀ
hardly believe any of this, except I do believe it
00:09:42
because I spent months fact-checking this as muchĀ
as possible. But itās still unbelievable.
00:09:49
SKITZO: Jeez, Team Avalaunch is a collectiveĀ
group of hackers and hardware enthusiasts,
00:09:59
letās put it that way. The main focusĀ
there was Xbox. There were some members
00:10:03
that ventured into different areas. You hadĀ
individuals like Lantus that was really,
00:10:11
really great with the emulationĀ
side of things. People like Redline,
00:10:18
who could do wonders with networking, and thenĀ
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, theĀ
games were great. Halo was my favorite,
00:10:32
of course. The AI of the enemies in that gameĀ
was just unlike anything Iāve ever seen before.
00:10:36
It was amazing. But after the Xbox was out forĀ
a while and that initial sheen sort of wore off,
00:10:42
some people didnāt like the dashboard that cameĀ
with it. The Xbox dashboard is the menu within the
00:10:48
Xbox and it lets you pick the games you want toĀ
play, log into Xbox Live, look at your settings,
00:10:52
that kind of stuff. The stock dashboard justĀ
wasnāt enough for this group of hackers,
00:10:56
so they got together to try to make a betterĀ
dashboard. They wrote the software themselves
00:11:01
and then got the Xbox to play it.
This wasnāt easy to do, to hack the Xbox
00:11:05
into playing your own homemade software, butĀ
eventually they got it. The dashboard that Team
00:11:11
Avalaunch made was pretty popular among the peopleĀ
who liked modding their Xbox. Another thing this
00:11:15
group tried to do is play other games on the XboxĀ
like Nintendo games and PlayStation games. You
00:11:21
know what? They were doing it. They were hackingĀ
the Xbox to play all kinds of games the Xbox was
00:11:25
not supposed to play. But really, if we take outĀ
our moral compass here, changing the dashboard
00:11:31
and running emulators on your Xbox might be justĀ
entering the yellow area of hacking. Yeah, itās
00:11:37
against the terms of service and might be illegal,Ā
but itās not really that big of a deal for someone
00:11:41
like Microsoft to crack down on, investigate,Ā
or hire some lawyers to go after you.
00:11:46
SKITZO: It was, you know, you want to doĀ
this with your Xbox, youāre gonna do this
00:11:52
with your Xbox. But it was never a maliciousĀ
attack on anything. It was a hobby.
00:11:58
JACK: Team Avalaunch tinkered and toyedĀ
with getting the Xbox to do all kinds
00:12:02
of things. When the Xbox 360 came out inĀ
2005, they were all over that, too.
00:12:09
SKITZO: Thatās more or less where I comeĀ
in. During that time of the OG Xbox scene,
00:12:15
I was more into the Sony and DreamcastĀ
scene. It wasnāt only until the 360 scene;
00:12:21
thatās 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 wasĀ
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 neverĀ
left the chip that it was on, making it impossible
00:12:38
to do what bunnie did. All new methods for gettingĀ
custom software to run on the Xbox had to be done.
00:12:44
Team Avalaunch figured this out and built aĀ
custom dashboard for the 360. A few things were
00:12:49
released publically for other people to also do,Ā
but a lot of hacking was just kept secret within
00:12:55
the group and wasnāt publically shared.
SKITZO: I mean, obviously we ruffled feathers but
00:13:00
we werenāt there to play pirated games. I mean,Ā
obviously ultimately when the majority of people
00:13:07
that will do this want to do that, I was more thanĀ
happy playing CPS3 games and Super Nintendo games,
00:13:14
and XBMC on my OG Xbox than I was moreĀ
concerned about playing a pirated game.
00:13:23
JACK: You kinda get the feel ofĀ
what Team Avalaunch is up to,
00:13:26
right? Theyāre figuring out howĀ
to mod the Xbox, take it apart,
00:13:29
make it do things itās not supposed to do.Ā
One of the members of Team Avalaunch was
00:13:33
named Rowdy Van Cleave. He was thirty-eightĀ
years old, living in California.
00:13:39
SKITZO: Howdy gotā¦
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 rightĀ
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 toxicĀ
components and need to be disposed of properly.
00:14:07
Rowdy heard there were Xbox DVD drives forĀ
sale at this facility, cheap. He went down
00:14:12
there [00:15:00] to take a look. While he was downĀ
there, he found a couple of Xbox 360 motherboards,
00:14:17
but these looked different than what Rowdy knewĀ
an Xbox 360 motherboard looked like. He took a
00:14:23
few of these motherboards home and popped oneĀ
into his Xbox 360 and booted it up. The words
00:14:29
that Rowdy said next were āholy shit, this isĀ
a freaking dev motherboard.ā The Xbox 360 dev
00:14:37
motherboards were used by programmers themselvesĀ
to make video games for the Xbox.
00:14:40
You could only get one after Microsoft vigorouslyĀ
screened you to be a legitimate developer. It
00:14:46
enabled a lot more features on the Xbox andĀ
gave them extra access to do things. Under
00:14:51
no circumstance did Microsoft ever want these inĀ
the hands of consumers, much less Xbox hackers.
00:14:58
They called these ādev kitsā and they looked,Ā
acted, and worked just like a regular Xbox 360,
00:15:03
but with a ton more features. Rowdy knewĀ
this and to him, this was a jackpot of a
00:15:11
find. He went back to the facility to look forĀ
more and couldnāt believe what he saw.
00:15:16
SKITZO: There were thousands and thousands andĀ
thousands of kits. Here, Iāll put it to you in
00:15:21
this way; I had a kit that was covered in mud.Ā
Thatās how the kit went to this facility. It was
00:15:29
covered in mud. I called it the Joe Dirt Kit.Ā
I never cleaned it ācause I found it hilarious.
00:15:35
I was like, what the hell did Microsoft do toĀ
these kits for it to be covered in mud?
00:15:39
JACK: You can imagine a fairly popularĀ
and long-running Xbox hacking group
00:15:44
stumbling upon a find like this. Itās likeĀ
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 āmeant to dieā he means
00:16:05
recycled, destroyed, discontinued, because maybeĀ
Microsoft didnāt have a need for these anymore,
00:16:10
or these were returned ones,Ā
or defective or something,
00:16:14
but Microsoft just didnāt need themĀ
anymore and wanted them gone. [MUSIC]
00:16:22
Rowdy grabbed all that he could and startedĀ
passing them out to everyone in Team Avalaunch.
00:16:27
People didnāt take just one; you took one just toĀ
take apart, and then you grabbed another to try
00:16:31
modding it, and then you grabbed another to seeĀ
what it was capable of on Xbox Live and stuff.
00:16:37
There were so many kits going around thatĀ
it was so easy to get multiples of them.
00:16:40
It sort of became a business for Rowdy. NotĀ
that he really wanted to get rich off it,
00:16:45
but he wanted to put the kits in the hands ofĀ
Xbox hackers that he knew and trusted.
00:16:49
SKITZO: During that time, I got introducedĀ
into it. Like hey, why donāt you have a
00:16:54
quick peek at whatās going on here?
JACK: Now Skitzo is stoked on getting his
00:16:58
hands on one of these. The Xbox 360 devĀ
kit is exactly the same as a regular Xbox,
00:17:03
just with all kinds of developer options enabled.Ā
One of the most amazing things about owning a dev
00:17:08
kit was the ability to access PartnerNet.
SKITZO: Basically, itās the developer
00:17:14
version of Xbox Live. All kits had a, air quotes,Ā
ācredit cardā so you could make any profile and
00:17:24
just jump on PartnerNet and you could, if needĀ
be, purchase Xbox Live points at that time. But
00:17:33
90% of the time, developers who put their gamesĀ
up for testers to get ahold of it, or to demo,
00:17:39
and you download it. It acted exactly asĀ
retail Xbox Live did at that time.
00:17:46
JACK: Through PartnerNet, you could potentiallyĀ
see and play unreleased games or unreleased
00:17:51
patches, or unreleased add-ons for games, orĀ
unreleased maps. It was amazing for this hacker
00:17:56
crew to all have the first peek at all this stuff.Ā
It was like the wild west for them. While playing
00:18:02
games on it was fun and lasted a while, the hotĀ
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 canĀ
we do to it? That was the ultimate goal;
00:18:19
can we get an emulator running on it? Can we getĀ
MAME on this thing? Can we get anything to XBMC,
00:18:28
things of that nature? Whatās theĀ
architect behind it? What are the limits?
00:18:33
The network presence that Microsoft tookĀ
at this time was far more advanced than
00:18:39
what the original Xbox had, with respect toĀ
connecting on Xbox Live and things like that.
00:18:46
How was hard drive structure and the encryption?Ā
How did Hyper-V work? It was that Pandoraās box
00:18:55
of like ā to your point, how excited were you, itĀ
wasnāt 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. TheyĀ
knew that this was something the public was
00:19:11
never [00:20:00] meant to see and here they were,Ā
a whole team of people, hacking away at it.
00:19:15
SKITZO: The public should never have this. ItāsĀ
the gateway into all the millions of millions of
00:19:23
dollars and manpower that you spent on securingĀ
your system. Why donāt you tape your house key
00:19:29
to your front door when you get home? YouāreĀ
pulling the curtain behind the console, right?
00:19:35
With the right tools you can get into the console.Ā
You can see how things load. You can do timed
00:19:39
attacks on it. You can do a number of differentĀ
things to the console, have an easier time doing
00:19:45
it than retail thatās locked up.
JACK: Around this time, Halo 3 was about
00:19:50
to be released and those who pre-ordered itĀ
got access to the beta version a few months
00:19:55
before the release. With these DEV kits,Ā
Skitzo and the team could play the public
00:20:00
beta version of Halo 3. Nothing really specialĀ
here, but the beta only lasted a short while,
00:20:04
just to test it, and then the game was notĀ
playable for a few months until the official
00:20:09
release. But Team Avalaunch, using their devĀ
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 serverĀ
that Bungee had set up and we would play.
00:20:33
Bungee was trying to take the server down,Ā
and Bungee had a custom welcome screen for us
00:20:41
because we kept a dev kit running called HaloĀ
3 Dummy. Halo 3 Dummy kept that server alive
00:20:51
so we could get in and play while after the airĀ
quotes, ābeta timeā expired on Partners.
00:21:02
JACK: They did so much more with these dev kits,Ā
grabbing stuff from Xbox Live and moving it to dev
00:21:07
so that they could play it as developers.Ā
Like, you could enable things like double
00:21:11
experience points or load up special loot.Ā
Itās like you could be a GM in many games,
00:21:16
and they played a lot of beta games andĀ
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,Ā
and mostly these kits would only be put in the
00:21:37
hands of people in Team Avalaunch. He wantedĀ
to keep this secret and underground.
00:21:41
SKITZO: But for a while it wasĀ
very close-knit. It was a family.
00:21:46
We were a family and I know that term is usedĀ
a lot but all good things must come to an end.
00:21:55
We had greed that started happening withĀ
the one guy who kept getting the kits
00:22:04
and was always just for us, just for us, andĀ
next thing you know, shitās starting to flood
00:22:12
the market and every jackass out there withĀ
five hundred bucks is getting a fucked-up kit.
00:22:20
The kits are getting into the hands ofĀ
people that shouldnāt have had it, and
00:22:24
you had garbage cans of humanĀ
beings getting closer to the scene.
00:22:31
Then you had the new bloods that came inĀ
and it was just, fuck it. Just go.
00:22:38
JACK: Letās talk about these new bloods. First,Ā
letās 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 newĀ
bloods, right? These are young kids just getting
00:22:59
in the Xbox hacker scene. Because Skitzo and RowdyĀ
were much older and had been in the scene for many
00:23:04
years at this point, they were like veterans. ButĀ
now young kids like Dylan are showing up, and back
00:23:10
then, Dylanās hacker name was Dae, D-A-E.
SKITZO: Dae came around and he really didnāt 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 networksĀ
I probably shouldnāt have gotten into.
00:23:34
JACK: Whoa.
DYLAN: I think it was the thrill of knowing whatās
00:23:40
behind doors that kind of got me into it.
JACK: Look at this recipe; a young kid,
00:23:44
doesnāt care much about the rules, loves videoĀ
games and the Xbox, loves hacking, and is hungry
00:23:49
to learn more and do something crazy. CombineĀ
that with a high level of curiosity, and someone
00:23:55
who has always āonā energy, you get Dylan.
DYLAN: I think back then it was just not knowing
00:24:01
what you can and canāt do. Just not beingĀ
told this is wrong doesnāt necessarily go
00:24:10
past a teenagerās mind, [00:25:00] so I thinkĀ
I just liked the thrill of it. It was kind of
00:24:16
like a rush, it was like an adrenaline rushĀ
every time I got into something, and seeing
00:24:23
things that I shouldnāt have seen. Thatās kindĀ
of what makes you want to do it even more.
00:24:30
JACK: Dylan was so fascinated with Xboxes, heĀ
wanted to learn how to hack it. Yeah, he starts
00:24:35
joining Xbox hacker forums and hanging out inĀ
the chat rooms, and getting to know whoās who
00:24:40
in the scene. Thereās another person who showed upĀ
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 recordĀ
so weāre good to go.
00:24:52
JACK: Letās start out with you tellingĀ
us your name. What is your name?
00:24:58
SANAD: My name is Sanad Nesheiwat. For someĀ
reason on my birth certificate, the doctorās
00:25:03
messed up and put my middle name and first nameĀ
together. Thatās why it says Sanadodeh Nesheiwat.
00:25:09
But itās 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. Iāve beenĀ
gaming since I was about eight years old. I
00:25:23
didnāt really get into that whole hacking thingĀ
up until the Dreamcast came out. Thatās 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,Ā
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,Ā
electronic parts everywhere. At one point,
00:25:47
I asked him a question about electronicsĀ
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 theĀ
bottom and hot air from the top. It allows you
00:26:00
to take the chip off and clean out the solderĀ
and put brand-new solder balls on it.
00:26:06
JACK: Okay, okay. You get it, right? Sanad isĀ
passionate about electronics. Heās a hardcore
00:26:10
gamer and he loves breaking things just to openĀ
them up and see whatās inside, and how they work.
00:26:14
He loves Dreamcast and Xboxes, and these kindĀ
of things. Sanad was deep in the console hacking
00:26:20
scene. At one point, he and a friend createdĀ
a launcher that would run pirated software on
00:26:24
the Xbox. But his friends started telling himĀ
about the Xbox dev kits that were going around
00:26:29
in the scene at the time. His friends saidā¦
SANAD: Hey, you guys can totally use dev kits to
00:26:35
make your launcher a lot smoother, and you canĀ
debug it in real-time, and so on and so forth.
00:26:41
I was like alright, so we put togetherĀ
a PayPal donation account and a bunch
00:26:48
of people donated so I was actually able toĀ
get everybody on the team a dev kit through
00:26:52
Rowdy. Thatās when I first got one.
JACK: There was something absolutely magical
00:26:58
about being a console hacker in 2010Ā
and getting an Xbox dev kit in the mail.
00:27:03
This was something you werenāt supposed to have;Ā
this was forbidden. Here Sanad is, opening it up,
00:27:09
eager to plug it in and play it, like itāsĀ
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 aĀ
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 XboxĀ
Live but everything that you download
00:27:41
is betas and itās all free.
