Xbox 360 Glitch Exploit
The Xbox 360 has been cracked open multiple times over the years, and almost every time Microsoft's updates plugged whichever hole let hackers through. The first method was modded DVD firmware in 2006, a hypervisor hack followed in 2007, and a wiring hack exposing JTAG debugging ports was revealed in 2009. The longest-lasting physical hack was 2011's CPU force-reset exploit. That maneuver needed specialized hardware along with a voltage-glitching chip, but an enterprising techie showed how it can be performed nowadays with the assistance of a Raspberry Pi Pico, costing all of $4. The crack marks the culmination of a nine-year effort by the modder.
The aforementioned reset exploit involves sending a signal directly into the CPU's reset pin, causing the CPU to execute the current instruction incorrectly.
Bypassing Cryptography
Naturally, someone figured out how to leverage that to run arbitrary code on the CPU, thus completely bypassing Microsoft's cryptography within the console. Sending said signal for an effective hack requires spectacularly precise timing with a resolution down to nanoseconds, and glitch-chips may even require several attempts to get a successful latch.
Scottish hacker Joshua Kennedy bought a Matrix Coolrunner Rev D modchip board back in 2017 to hack his console this way, but it required soldering wires, NAND, programmers, and patience. He once tried rolling his own programmers using an old PC's parallel port, but never got the project off the ground and shelved the idea.
Modernizing the Mod With a Microcontroller
Fast-forward to 2026, and a new tool presented itself: the Raspberry Pi Pico microcontroller, whose price starts at $4. He connected the Pi Pico to the NAND interface header on the console to be able to dump the console's NAND flash firmware using the PicoFlasher utility. Kennedy took the NAND data, patched it, and reuploaded it.
He moved on to download Octal450's Timing Files, a set of mini-programs triggering the glitch chip at the best possible timing to try and reset the CPU. These are necessary because the window of opportunity is different across every hardware revision of the Xbox 360. Enlisting the Pi Pico once again, he uploaded the timing files to the Matrix Coolrunner and completed the hack process.
