Nine-year effort to hack Xbox 360
The gist
A blogger spent nine years hacking his Xbox 360, finally succeeding in 2026.
The feat shows how cheap microcontrollers have made hardware fault injection accessible.
How it unfolded
- 2017Author purchased a Matrix CoolRunner Rev D glitcher chip and first attempted modchipping an Xbox 360, but found it expensive and requiring a glitching chip, solder, an iron, and a NAND programmer.
- 2021Raspberry Pi Pico microcontroller released for £5; Apple AirTag firmware dumped using a Pico and fault injection; Microsoft began enforcing hardware-backed secure boot.
- 2023PicoFly modchip released for the Nintendo Switch, using fault injection to defeat secure boot.