'Banned' Xbox hacking book selling fast

   Hacker-engineer Andrew “Bunnie” Huang says he’s already pre-sold
   between 400 and 500 copies of his self-published tell-all “Hacking the
   Xbox: an Introduction to Reverse Engineering,” weeks before its
   scheduled May 27th publication date, despite — or perhaps because of
   — looming suspicions by some that the book skirts the edges of
   legality.

   “It’ s about getting the book out there on principle, because I can’t
   find a publisher willing to publish it,” says Huang. “I think it’s
   controversial, but not illegal.”

   With chapters on “Soldering Techniques” and “Installing a Blue LED,”
   Huang’s how-to may not seem an obvious candidate for joining
   Huckleberry Finn and Harry Potter on history’s sad list of once-banned
   books. But Microsoft, the maker of the Xbox, has taken a dim view of
   home modifications of the game console, focusing its litigious ire in
   particular on “mod chips” that allow Xbox owners to run software that
   Microsoft hasn’t approved and licensed. With a mod chip installed,
   users can run everything from virtual juke boxes to the Linux
   operating system on the game platform — as well as pirated copies of
   Xbox games.

   Last year, a Microsoft lawsuit temporarily shut down the Hong
   Kong-based company Lik Sang, which sold mod chips over the Internet.
   And last month, mod chip entrepreneur David Rocci was [40]sentenced to
   five months in federal custody for conspiracy to violate the Digital
   Millennium Copyright Act. Rocci was the proprietor of a U.S. website
   that sold mod chips and helped users locate pirated copies of Xbox
   games to run on their modified machines.

   Huang says his book describes some types of mod chips — explains how
   they work, and what lessons they offer designers of secure hardware
   platforms. For example the “Matrix” chip installs solderlessly over a
   test port manufacturers left on the Xbox motherboard. “You don’t leave
   these test structures on the motherboard, if you want it secure,” says
   Huang. Another chapter helps readers replace the machine’s firmware –
   a mod chip trick used by sophisticated pirates and tinkerers. “They
   can be used by the pirating community, and they can be used by the
   Linux community — so that one chapter that talks about firmware
   devices plays to the Linux community,” says Huang. “I believe that
   should be a legal activity.”

   DMCA Fears

   The book also revisits a technique that cemented Huang’s reputation as
   a hardware hacker last year, which involves building custom hardware
   to intercept an encryption key as it crosses the Xbox’s internal
   high-speed bus. To avoid legal complications, Huang published his
   research paper on the technique only after receiving permission from
   Microsoft, negotiated with the help of EFF attorney Lee Tien. “To get
   the paper published in the first place we had to negotiate a legal
   mine field,” say Tien, who went on to contribute a chapter on the
   legalities of reverse engineering to Huang’s book.

   But Huang didn’t get Microsoft’s blessing for Hacking the Xbox, which
   goes beyond discussing a single hacking technique. The book aims to
   teach readers how to think like a hardware hacker, using the internal
   secrets of the game console the way a med school teacher uses Gray’s
   Anatomy. With the boundaries of federal copyright law, particularly
   the DMCA, unclear, Huang says tech-publishing house John Wiley & Sons
   got cold feet and withdrew its plans to publish the book sometime
   after Rocci’s guilty plea.

   Wiley didn’t return phone calls on the matter.

   Unable to find another publisher, Huang elected to sell the book
   himself through the Web. He dug into his own pockets to fund a print
   run of 1,000 books, which he says will be delivered to his home later
   this month. “It’ll be only a matter of two weeks when a pallet of
   books comes to my doorstep,” he says. “Every book will be boxed by my
   own two hands.”

   Huang began accepting credit cards through his [41]website this week,
   after already selling nearly half of his initial print run through a
   PayPal account. He says he’s barely reached the break-even point.
   “He’s not going to make a huge amount of money,” says Tien. “He thinks
   that it’s worthwhile stuff. That it’s interesting, and it’s teaching
   people.”

   “Mainly, at this point, it’s boiled down to a political battle, for
   the freedom to tinker,” says Huang. “For my entire life I’ve been
   playing with hardware. This is the first time someone’s told me I
   can’t play with hardware because it’s illegal.”

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