Thread: Respawn Time

Viruses don't affect hardware, they affect software.

The main difference would be the Operating system (I believe).

And you don't have to check for viruses because people don't really make viruses for xbox's. You have to remember these are man-made applications. People don't really have much incentive to make viruses for xbox's because well, what's the point? It'd be a pain in the ass, it'd be hard to spread, and etc.

Edit: I have only little relative knowledge on the true workings of software, so please forgive me someone who is more knowledgeable on the subject finds my statements erroneous.

The Xbox 360 is a walled garden, while the install base is large the idea of pushing a virus isn't so hot. These days most malicious software is aimed at making a profit for someone or serving some other purpose like attacking networks.

In the PC (or I should say, Windows) world the install base is huge. So if you can infect a large number of computers and servers behind high speed lines (and when I say high speed, I don't mean your cable connection) you have the ability to cause a lot of chaos, a powerful network of infected PCs to launch attacks against your enemies, and a large portion of those might be owned by dopes who'll click on your pop-up windows.

In Windows patches are pushed often, but a large portion of the user base doesn't apply them right away. Another large portion of the user base uses pirated software and doesn't have the ability to upgrade, or doesn't upgrade out of fear of begin deactivated.

So not only do the endless number of "zero-day" exploits work, but so do the ones that have been known for days, months, years....

The Windows OS is targeted mainly because there are so many computers running Windows. Mac OS X is actually less secure than Windows, and patches don't come out as quickly for known exploits, it is always compromised first in hacking contests. Linux is open source so anyone can read the source code and find exploits with no problems. These two operating systems are rarely attacked in the wild though because the install base is so small. It is simply not profitable to target those operating systems.

Now I need to cover one thing before moving on: Linux and the *BSD operating systems are targeted more often than OS X because they are commonly used for web servers. In these cases they are rarely exploited by a "virus" though. Instead these machines are "rooted", meaning someone gains full control over them remotely through means of an exploit. Once you have control you can do as you please....but most people don't do anything too wild with these machines. Why? Because their operators/owners notice anything odd pretty quickly. Plus because the OS is open source and the user base is more tech savy than your average Windows OS user bugs are found and patched fast.

Now moving away from PCs and to your original question: Why aren't Xboxes the target of malicious software?

The answer is simple: It is a closed system running on a closed network. Even if you found an exploit and managed to infect a few machines it would be noticed very quickly. Microsoft will push a patch in the form of a firmware update and every single console connected to LIVE will be forced to install this update before they can access the network (and other consoles) again.

So basically, while you could have a little fun for maybe a day or two at most there is zero profit in it. These machines can't be used to ddos a server for example, because they are behind "slow" broadband connections and the user would notice the traffic right away (because they would be lagging all over the place). If you did try to launch an attack with your limited resources Microsoft would notice right away and shut it down almost right away. Your work would be useless after they pushed the patch because exploitable machines would not be allowed on the network (their primary means of finding other machines to infect).

I'll admit, writing a virus for the platform would be rather neat and it's probably easier than you might think. The problem is, as I said, once they patch it you'd have to start all over again and find another exploit. Another thing to note: Microsoft is able to remotely detect a modified console (software and hardware) so your exploit might make the console look funny enough to the head end that it would be flagged as modified and instantly banned from the LIVE network as soon as it connected. If that's the case it would be rather expensive just to test such an exploit, because you'd have to acquire a new console each time you managed to get yourself banned. As of right now it is impossible to unban a console once it has been flagged without having another unbanned console (and even this method will probably just result in another insta-ban if your still running modified software/hardware).

Hopefully that was detailed enough while still begin understandable... Oh yea, I am not an expert...>.>

Oh yea, one last thing: I don't run "anti-virus" software in Windows. I browse smart, I patch ASAP, don't install anything unless I know it is legit, don't run pirated software, don't click on random crap, and I run noscript/adblock and have a router that's properly configured to filter out most of the crap.

Even I get hit by drive-by exploits every now and again, meaning a random infected machine found my machine at random (as they do) and managed to get in before I patched (assuming one was available). This has happened maybe 4 times to my personal machines in the last 15 years. When this does happen I would catch it early and remove the malware manually after I identified it. This process is very simple if you have good google-fu, but only like 5% of Windows users know how to do all of this.

Most Windows PCs end up in such a sorry state because their users are frankly, stupid. Anti-Virus software (at least from the big players) is snake oil. It does little to prevent anything bad from getting in because a dumb user will disable it to install the latest malware if it is bundled with a video game or something a long those lines. Anti-Virus software usually sits in the background eating up most of your resources, making it basically useless because it must be disabled if you ever really need to stress the machine (gaming, encoding video, stuff like that). To a power user it is useless.

Every Malware infected machine I've ever worked on had a "virus scanner" on it and most of the time the owner of said machine simply doesn't believe that anything bad could ever get in. Even though they never update the database or run a routine scan. So it just sits in the background begin useless sucking up 50-100% of the CPU and who knows how much RAM.