I know you guys dont do much with the 360 stuff but i was thinking you would want to know.

Microsoft Starts New Ban Wave on LIVE Against Modified Firmwares

>> We don't have a lot of information yet (it just started, but we try to warn you all as early as possible), but it looks like Microsoft started a new wave of bans against modified DVD firmwares or DVD+/-R DL discs.
Several users on our forums and on IRC report their Xbox 360 has been banned from LIVE today. We get reports of Toshiba-Samsung and Hitachi-LG drives banned with both Xtreme and even the latest iXtreme firmwares. However we also see reports of people who are currently on LIVE and have no been banned (yet). No reports of banned BenQ drives yet (but few of these drives have been flashed yet).
We don't know yet if Microsoft is detecting the modified firmware or the discs (or maybe only with a specific game?).
If you have the 'Z Code' 8015-190D it means you are banned.


So until we have more info we HIGHLY suggest you don't log in to Xbox LIVE and don't play any games from DVD+/-R DL (even offline, incase MS flags something) if you have a flashed DVD drive.

Actually virtually everyone on staff here has a 360, so this is very relevant information. Thanks for posting.

MS is stupid, even if they lose some money to game piracy, those people still pay to go on Live. One has nothing to do with the other. It's a half-assed solution, if MS spent as much time researching the firmware hacks, they probably would have an answer for it by now. Either they concluded there is little or nothing they can do about modified firmwares booting backups, or this is just a half-witted assault against firmware modders. Which again makes no sense, because even if people pirate games, they same people are still paying to go on XBL, not to mention all the MS Points and money they spend on downloads of movies, TV shows, demos, and XBL arcade.

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Well, when you stop and think about it, it would appear the MS is approaching this very intelligently. They need a boost in sales for the holiday season, just ban a bunch of consoles. They know that the majority of modders will go out and buy another console. It's all a business scam in my opinion. If it weren't, then they would just ban the lot of them if their detection method was all that great and all.

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Could be so, its not hard to change the 360 to detect the disc label id. And it does seem very logical, cause you can really modify a disc id.

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Yeah, i am still up in the air as to if i should boot mine up and see what happens. Personally if it was not for the gaming clan i am in i would care less about being banned really. I would just play stuff offline since there is only one game (Rainbow 6 Vegas) that i actually do anything with online. And i have optional practice tonight that i am suppose to host and see if anyone shows. So i guess i have a decision i need to make by 8PM EST as to what i am going to do. I slipped by the last round with no problems. It may be because unlike so many other people i have not done anything to the console since the day it was modded. I have no plans for updates as i told everyone then, the iXtreme firmware is nothing more than an idiot proof against playing non-stealth games. It wil offer no more protection then what i am running now.

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C4E has stated that he believes this round has to do with poorly made backups. I just read it a few minutes ago and here was his statement:

It appears that modified fw is NOT being detected, and is instead once again due to 'bad' discs. Keep in mind that the only full proof way to make a 1:1 backup is to do it yourself. iXtreme is as fullproof as it can be, in that it validates everything it possibly can from a firmware point of view, but a game can have slight data change somewhere, most commonly in DMI. Or it can be due to early copies being watermarked so to speak.

This is why you run the risk of being banned on xbox live if you pirate games. Always remember that you run a risk doing such actions.

In regards to game data being properly validated, xdvdmulleter is a tool that has a constantly maintained database to validate backups against retail copies to ensure full stealth. If you have a samsung SH-D16x and would like to contribute to the project to prevent future Live bans, please join #stealth360 on Efnet, IRC.

So, it's not that bad, just some people not taking the time to make sure their stuff is up to snuff.

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well, there is surely a way to find out if that is indeed true. Just find some people who have only had the ixtreme firmware on their machine and see if any of them have been banned. If they have then bad back ups is not what was causing it because they would not be able to play anything that was not stealth. So it will be interesting to see how all this develops. There are theories flying around left and right all over every 360 forum at this point.
I have only played a game that was not stealth once and it was before stealth patching was a hot topic and before the firsst time these banning started. So i guess another question would be is when exactly did MS start flagging these bad back up copies.

Who knows, they may have had a list from way back when and it is so long that they periodically just drop the hammer on a few hundred people at a time. No telling if those who played a non-stealth copy and then switched to the new firmware were not already flagged and on santa's naughty list.

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Well, when you really stop and think about it, it makes sense. The ixtreme firmware only checks to see if the stealth stuff is there. It "can't" check the stealth stuff for correctness. You could have the ss, DMI and PFI from say gears of war and inject them into say viva pinata and it ixtreme would allow it to do it's thing. And of course when you log into live with such a thing, you get put on the "naughty list".

But, who knows, they may have some other type of detection that we don't know about just as easily as anything else.

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Doesn't sound like there are any definitive answers as yet. Hey MS Ban Me! I could give a flying f*ck, I don't ever want to pay money to see a guy choking the chicken at 4AM via Xbox Live Vision Camera! There's enough stupid, ignorant masses where I live, I don't need to see them during my recreation time.

As far as MS doing it on purpose to force modders to buy a separate console, I hadn't thought about that angle. That probably is true, everything MS does is a business scam. However, they should've learned that from the last round of bans... keep a separate unmodded console for Live, and a modded one for personal use. So Sadalius... if a console is banned from Live, would that affect people's ability to use apps like Leaf networks to setup a game over a network between friends?

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If your using Leaf or Kia it won't affect you as your not connecting to microsoft's servers in that situation. There isn't anything to tell the console that your banned and your in essence playing a system link game.

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