User:Melissa Mears
From Xbox-Linux
Melissa Mears
Email address: [asterisk@graces.dricas.com (mailto:asterisk@graces.dricas.com)]
I don't have a web site or PGP key, and no, I won't show my picture! (hehe)
I'm a 22 year old woman attending the [University of California at Irvine (http://www.uci.edu/)] as a Computer Science major. I live near my college, in Irvine, California, USA, in infamous Orange County.
I'm somewhat of an expert in Windows NT and reverse engineering, and these are things the project desperately needed in the early days, and later when the exploits came around. I actually don't even use Linux! (I would use Linux on an Internet server, but I don't have one.) Strangely enough, despite liking Windows NT a lot, I don't like Microsoft. That's why I like [ReactOS (http://www.reactos.com/)] a lot - an open-source Windows NT clone.
These are the things I've done for Xbox Linux:
- Extensively reverse engineered Microsoft's native Xbox kernel to understand how to interface with it, and to understand its security mechanisms. This knowledge was important for many things, including understanding the Xbox hardware and making exploits. For example, the first exploit, 007: Agent Under Fire, required interfacing to the Xbox security system in order to boot a second XBE as well as to add a security mechanism to try to lock out pirate uses of the exploit as best as possible.
- Designed the basis of xbeboot, the exiting of Microsoft's kernel into a Linux kernel, along with Michael Steil. Specifically, I made the code to exit from the NT environment into flat unpaged 32 bit mode so that the Linux kernel could then be started.
- Designed a method of dumping the MCPX version D4 chip, also known as Xbox "v1.1", that was used to make Cromwell compatible with v1.1 systems. This method turned out to be much simpler (much easier soldering) than the method Andrew Huang used on the original Xbox; however, had he not broken the original, we wouldn't have broken v1.1 even with my technique. This came out of a consortium of team members assembled for the task; it was others who actually implemented my technique since I have no soldering skills. Unfortunately, one of the team members (I won't say who, but it wasn't me) turned out to work with a mod chip company, and our work ended up being used to help pirates break v1.1 for themselves.
- Created MechInstaller, a mod-less way to permanently install Linux on an Xbox using the video game MechAssault. (The Dashboard exploit on which MechInstaller is based was discovered by Stefan Esser. He made this possible; my work is just a very nice way to use it.)
