MS Ban Hammer - 10.30.09

yup, one of the boxes I did 3 weeks ago was banned yesterday, another today, and sadly, mine today as well.

Hey it was a good run while it lasted, and I'm sure the ware ain't over yet

 

Microsoft is detecting that we are playing back ups plain and simple. Regardless if you played your back up a while ago, I am sure that the information is going to come back to you.

 

Hitachi 1.5

 

strange cuz i have the same setup and i have been playing all day mostly campaign and then a single player campaign. So if you were really banned playing retail, I should be on the same boat as you very soon. That really sux!

we should all bycott live and just use other services to play online....

 

I have BenQ Ixtreme 1.6, checked my backups, all are clean. Was in the middle of a MW2 team deathmatch game. Original MW2, had been online for about 2 hours or so and was kicked off xbox live. At first I could log back in, I was chatting with my friend, as soon as I loaded MW2 back up, kicked from live. Logged back in and chatted again, thought I was banned specifally from MW2. As soon as I manually logged out and tried to log back in I could no longer get on xbox live. Sucks, I was just getting to learn the maps haha. I think the worst part is not being able to use Netflix anymore and obviously play MW2 which I bought yesterday. Poop stain...

 

I checked my console repair warranty in the service section on xbox.com and I got the error page with 54420 or whatever at the end of the url... Am I gonna die like that guy in The Godfather where he drives up to the toll booth and its like all deserted and then he gets owned by a whole handful of Tommy Guns?

I don't want my 360 to go like that...

But seriously, should I try online and do the Z error network test or just try to sign in regularly? If I'm done I'd like to try to keep the Install to HDD feature...

And since I have a Lite-On I can't restore it, which I just learned

 

Hahah yes because that's what I said Yesterday to my friend who was telling me about his being banned the day before...and I have been playing the Retail copy of MW2 since about 2am on the release date....and i Jus got banned today after login out an back in....sux majorly

 

has anyone in europe been banned yet.
it seems an awfull lot of these posts are american
are they doing it region by region?

 

exact thing here playing retail mw2 and got banned, but no worries new modded box was already getting reparied and shipped back, i guess the only thing is to be more carefull next time

 

Ok I'm not banned yet, but I sign in to check just now and it's asking me to update what do I do?

 

I've read in the new york a.m. paper today ''Microsoft has been sweeping their servers for modified consoles'' or something alone the lines of that ...pretty much they have swept their servers for offenders such as myself...and elsewhere ive read ban waves were expensive for man power or something..i think that was from here lol...so..maybe its a seasonal thing?...for the mw2 release etc like...from now on we should all hide our live heads in the dirt for massive releases?..the server sweeps makes sense to me ...anyone else?

 

20 million live members? It's 19 million now, idiots...

 

I got this info from another site

EDIT* WRONG DAMN INFO!

Xbox360 LIVE Bans Info and iXtreme Online FW WIP
>> Here are some details about the Xbox360 LIVE bans I got directly and indirectly from GaryOPA, Commodore4eva (C4E), Iriez and others. Of course don't take any of this info as 100% confirmed, noone knows exactly based on what data MS is banning ... it's just an analysis of what they think is happening and what MS might/can be checking.

C4E thinks MS is probably detecting and banning consoles from LIVE by tracking usage of backups via timing of the challenge response (c/r) on the drive over the last few weeks or months. A modified FW will reply much faster to the the Challenges requests (stored in a table) than an original firmware (seek on drive). They probably do this test more than once and can ban you if you're above a certain average.
FuzzyLogic also found that microsoft is sometimes doing additional checks on discs: PFI/DMI (so images without these sectors (or if using an old FWs without support for PFI/DMI) can probably be detected easily), drive inquiry (reads ascii string from drive), and capacity (reports capacity of disc) are requested. Strange thing here is MS requests 0x8000 bytes for PFI and DMI, while it should normally be 0x0800 bytes. TheSpecialist pointed out that the remaining 0x7800 bytes contains the relocated SS and PFI on burned discs ... which would make it very easy to detect backups for MS. C4E however told us this would not work on TS drives as its cut off to 0800 even if more data is asked, it's unconfirmed how modified HLG FWs drives respond to this atm.
The "read capacity check" will also work as detection on HLG because, unlike the newest TS FWs, it doesn't have true 'stealth media' yet, these drives are reporting back the burned disc based size of PFI instead of the correct PFI.
Apparently there's also an issue with SS (Security Sector) extracted from Hitachi-LG, some necessary data is screwed ... which means that probably only the Toshiba-Samsung / Kreon setup has been extracting correct SS.

Another thing they are probably detecting (but probably not using yet to decide to ban or not) and log/flag is if you ever booted your Xbox360 with DVD SATA cable not connected to your Xbox360 (E64). Many people did this to power their drive when they wanted to flash it (power connected to 360, SATA to PC). So it's highly suggested to use an external power to flash next time.
It's also possible MS also bans based on stuff like bad credit card info for your country, running a NTSC machine with euro-address/credit card (or inverse), having out-of-region (arcade) games and demos on your HDD, unofficial 360 HDD, internet downloaded gamesaves etc. There's no clear view on all this yet.
For now, C4E believes Microsoft is not detecting modified FWs or detecting FW changes/updates. Using a special FW they did not detect any debug commands sent to the drive by MS (they went through the dash/kernel updates with the special FW as well and did not detect any debug commands there either). So they think either:
A/ MS is not doing any FW detection right now, and only previously (maybe on request of MS servers while playing on LIVE?), or
B/ MS is banning based only on the timings of the drive, ss/pfi/dmi checks, capacity, drive inquiry and c/r verification.

We also got information C4E is working on an "iXtreme Online" FW for Toshiba-Samsung drives, a Hitachi-LG version and maybe even BenQ version might follow later.
The new FW will have less features than the current Xtreme FWs: no single-layer (DVD5) support, no ripping of games (0800 mode), but more features to safely play from burned discs (emulate the exact speed and timings of the original games) and prevent booting from un-safe discs (without PFI and DMI or bad SS - so discs not passing the 'Stealth Check' (using Xbox Backup Creator(info) for example) are not going to boot on the new firmware), or images that aren't exact dumps of the original.
There's no official ETA (maybe this weekend though for TS drives), and of course no guarantee MS will never ban you based on new checks (that's the risk it takes if you want to be part of the modding community ) The HLG FW will take a bit longer as it'll require true 'Stealth media' etc added.

This new FW will of course be made mostly for new consoles being modded, because even if you're not banned from LIVE yet there's no way to know if MS already has info/logs on your console ID regarding timings or other stuff so even changing to this new firmware in the near future may not stop that console ID from being banned in the next wave of MS bans.
If your console is not banned yet, it's highly suggested you don't boot any burned discs, originals should be ok, even when offline (MS might be storing results of some checks in flash), until the release of the new FW.
If your console is already banned this will of course not help you ... just enjoy the offline playing on that console for now (with some games you could try using 3rd party networks like XLink Kai(info)) and maybe some day a new exploit will allow you to do more with that console.

 

Neat info, but there is so much false information going around. How do we know this is legit?

 

The info above is from the 2007 banwave lol

 

well they got me 1 hour ago playing cdmw2 not a copy .been play that for 2 days and b4 that gow2 also not a copy. but about 4 days ago i was playing boderland a copy but passed all cheks in the abgx system. other than that have not played anything eles online. i try not to play copys online even if it did chek out so most games i play while offline. and i go as fare as to turn off the xbox, take out the game be for i reconect.one thing i did do that could have got me ban is my xbox broke for the 4 time and i did a gut swap that my be a reason that some are getting banned also. wont be doing that anymore.lite on 1.6 flashed 9/14/09

 

so,
ive been banned for a week now, but thats not the point, i have like 12friends that little by little ALL are getting banned, all kinds of drives and firmwares, no one is safe.
friend of mine that has a benq drive firmware 1.60 heard last week of the ban wave and to prevent that he thought he would be safe if he changed the firmware to the original, but to our disgrace he was banned today !
shame though, thought he was going to make it

 

I received this email from vendor:

XBOX 360
There have been several bans happening over the last week.
There is a new iXtreme LT firmware for your Xbox 360 Mod coming out soon...
It has not been confirmed but we beleive the current iXtreme firmware may be detecable on xbox live.
We strongly suggest you remain off of xbox live until further notice.
Gord - www.samsungdrives.com

 

Hello Everyone,

Just wanted to share my experience with this ban situation. I had my drive flashed over the summer to play backups. I got someone to do it because it was just more efficient at the time.

The only reason I flashed it was to play backups. I verify all games via ABGX, I do not play games early nor do I play games (backup or original) on live at all, but I did go on live a few days ago. I'm not exactly sure which firmware I have but I think its 1.51.

The reason why I went on live was because I wanted to connect my Xbox to my computer to stream divx movies and it required me to log online to do an update.

I didn't know that there was this ban wave going on, but I took out any disc that I had in the system and went online. All updates completed, logged off and streamed a movie. I believe two updates were installed.

I wanted to make sure that I wouldn't be banned by updating so I went on the computer to do some research and I found out that people were being banned since october.

Now after I updated there was no notification or errors of me being banned. Not sure if M$ detected my system for a future ban or not. Or maybe you have to be on live for a certain time to be swept. I'm gonna stay off live for now.. I can still run back ups.

If I do want to play a game online i'll just buy a PS3 or just wait for another flash.. Who knows may drive may have already been detected and M$ is just waiting for me to come back on to ban me.

Stayin' low