[HN Gopher] Breaking the console: a brief history of video game ...
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Breaking the console: a brief history of video game security
Author : sprado
Score : 88 points
Date : 2026-04-07 09:51 UTC (13 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (sergioprado.blog)
(TXT) w3m dump (sergioprado.blog)
| sprado wrote:
| After some time without posting on my blog, I decided to get back
| to it -- and my first post after the break is about the history
| of video game security! There are also some great stories along
| the way, like Atari reverse-engineering Nintendo's lockout
| system, or how simply changing the name of Link's horse became an
| attack vector on the Nintendo Wii. I had a lot of fun researching
| and writing this article, and I learned a lot in the process. I
| hope you enjoy it too!
| djmips wrote:
| Thanks I did enjoy it! One thing is, I feel like the PS1 wobble
| disc protection, although bypassed with swaps and mod chips, it
| has never been possible (besides one historic example: Datel)
| for someone other than Sony to make a disc bootable on the
| console. I feel like most PS1's weren't modded so it was quite
| a well done lockout. But I understand that wasn't your main
| point - just that it was a surprisingly effective copy
| protection.
| yaros_love wrote:
| Thanks for such an interesting read. Would be awesome to get sort
| of a "follow up" about modern sophisticated digital solutions we
| have now (denuvo and so on)
| sprado wrote:
| That would be a great follow up. Added to my list of next
| articles. Thanks for the suggestion!
| riverforest wrote:
| The cat and mouse between console makers and hackers is one of
| the more honest stories in tech. Both sides kept making each
| other better.
| sprado wrote:
| True!
| serhack_ wrote:
| interesting video I was seeing the other day:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FTFn4UZsA5U
| ytch wrote:
| Guarding Against Physical Attacks: The Xbox One Story -- Tony
| Chen, Microsoft:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U7VwtOrwceo
|
| I like this video too, Tony Chen explains the overview of Xbox
| security system.
| wise0wl wrote:
| So, I don't know if this is AI generated or whether the author is
| actually unaware, but Atari cartridges and floppies commonly had
| copy protections. My uncle was active in the scene at the time,
| and as an electrical engineer came up with a solution. When I
| inherited his Atari 800 in the 90s there was a physical button
| wired into the floppy drive which would force a bad sector onto
| the disk as it was being written. He had notebooks about the
| timing for these bad sectors per game.
|
| So, yeah. The "article" is incorrect from nearly the get-go about
| the "wild west" Atari age.
| sprado wrote:
| Thanks for the comment.
|
| No, it is not AI generated. It was based on my research.
|
| I think there is a mix-up here between Atari home consoles and
| Atari home computers.
|
| In that section I was talking about early console platforms
| such as the Atari 2600, where the cartridge interface itself
| had no lockout/authentication mechanism comparable to what
| Nintendo later did with the 10NES. That is why third-party
| cartridges could exist and Atari's main response was legal
| rather than technical.
|
| What you describe for the Atari 800 is real, but it belongs to
| a different context: the Atari 8-bit computer line, especially
| floppy-disk software, where copy-protection tricks such as
| intentional bad sectors and timing-based checks were indeed
| common.
|
| So I agree that Atari computer software often used copy
| protection, but that does not contradict the point I was making
| about the early console era.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| I find it interesting that all the way back in 1985, in Atari
| vs NES, we had proof that consumers preferred walled gardens.
| The walled garden exploded from a completely dead market, while
| the already-existing open system killed itself. Apple proceeded
| to make a killing of their own on this reality, Microsoft
| invented a pseudo-walled garden that has become a technical
| dead end, while FOSS communities are still in denial about how
| things shouldn't be that way rather than accepting reality and
| inventing their own curated experience with enforced rules.
| RajT88 wrote:
| > Microsoft invented a pseudo-walled garden that has become a
| technical dead end
|
| If you're referring to Windows, this is not very walled at
| all. You barely need a _computer_ to write and release
| windows apps, let alone money.
|
| Office, perhaps? Or a variety of other products.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| Windows is an open platform for developers... if you ignore
| all of the security checks and Windows Defender and the
| stagnant platform which is about 2 decades behind everyone
| else, across the board, in terms of native tooling (e.g.
| which UI framework should I use and is it good?).
|
| However, Windows also has many, many, walled garden things
| bolted onto it. You aren't distributing your own drivers
| without Microsoft's approval. You aren't running Microsoft
| Office on Wine. You aren't connecting to Active Directory
| without Microsoft's blessing. You aren't making group
| policies that work on Linux for MDM. You aren't
| manufacturing Windows devices, at all, unless they meet
| Microsoft's system requirements and mandates (e.g. a
| Windows icon on the keyboard). Your BIOS must follow strict
| rules about where the activation key is fused. Etc.
|
| In that respect, Windows is only open from an _end user_
| perspective. In all other respects, it is closed, and it is
| closed _tightly_.
| RajT88 wrote:
| > You aren't distributing your own drivers without
| Microsoft's approval.
|
| Only kernel drivers.
|
| > You aren't connecting to Active Directory without
| Microsoft's blessing.
|
| I think you're talking about EntraID. That is true
| enough. You can just spin up Windows Server and create a
| domain controller, no problem. You don't need Microsoft
| for domain services, though - you can use other domain
| controller types. (You don't get GPO and other things -
| that's not a 'walled garden' thing, that's a feature set
| which other systems don't have)
|
| > In that respect, Windows is only open from an end user
| perspective. In all other respects, it is closed, and it
| is closed tightly.
|
| Not so tight as you seem to think. And anyways, I was
| specifically referring to building windows apps - which
| you did not disagree with. You absolutely can pull down
| various free tools, build an app, package it up as a
| _.zip or_.msi and distribute it from a variety of places.
| The Windows app store is a walled garden, but you don 't
| have to use it.
| gosub100 wrote:
| I think consumers chose quality and convenience. It just so
| happens that the walled garden is the easiest way to
| accomplish this. Electronics, especially computers, were
| extremely expensive back then. I can't blame people for
| buying a console that just works. Compatibility was an issue
| well into the late 90s because so many people didn't know how
| computers worked.
| garciansmith wrote:
| I disagree, it wasn't about consumers, but rather other
| businesses. The walled garden approach Nintendo took in
| America was needed to convince retailers to stock video games
| on store shelves again. And of course the Famicom didn't have
| that same approach, and while Nintendo hated the fact third
| parties could easily make Famicom carts, the open nature of
| the system certainly didn't hurt it in Japan.
| mywittyname wrote:
| I think the takeaway is consumers want to trust the products
| they are buying are as advertised.
| Pannoniae wrote:
| Also another incorrect factoid: "The original Xbox (2001) was
| built on familiar PC hardware (Pentium III derivative, Intel
| GPU, standard hard drive)"
|
| (it was an NV GPU)
| sprado wrote:
| Good catch. Indeed the GPU was Nvidia's NV2A, not an Intel
| GPU. I will correct that in the article. Thanks for pointing
| it out.
| cheeseomlit wrote:
| Back in the day I remember my brother got his hands on a PS1
| modchip, but it didn't require any soldering- you just plugged it
| into the "parallel I/O" port in back of the console and it let us
| run games on burned CDs. We really got our moneys worth at
| blockbuster after that
| wil421 wrote:
| My buddies brother did the same thing with a PS1 and maybe sent
| his Xbox off somewhere to get it modded. However he was an
| asshole hermit and wouldn't let us play or burn any games.
|
| My dad would never cheat or do anything illegal even though he
| was an EE who could've done the mod himself. Today he might do
| it but there was a strict no stealing policy even for digital
| things. Like the time he freaked out because I was grabbing
| stuff from The Scene and wrote down a bunch of terms to
| research, he saw the word Warez and freaked out.
| Obscurity4340 wrote:
| Bewarez warez
| bob1029 wrote:
| The modern consoles are pretty close to perfect with how they use
| PKI and certificates. Even if you clone the cryptographic
| identity of a valid console, the vendor can quickly detect this
| impossible access scenario.
| sprado wrote:
| Correct. And identity management is so important nowadays that
| most security-related certifications and regulations require
| it.
| favorited wrote:
| The best part of the 10NES design, as a consumer, was that it was
| fail-safe, rather than fail-secure. The console defaulted to
| booting. So, if your NES started having the infamous boot-reset
| flashing light, all you had to do was unscrew the NES enclosure
| and clip the power pin on the 10NES chip. And these were huge
| pins, it didn't require any subtlety. You could do it with a nail
| clipper.
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