Raspberry Pi Pico helps modder finish Xbox 360 hack after nine years

Joshua Kennedy has completed an Xbox 360 reset glitch hack project that he originally started in 2017. Kennedy used two Raspberry Pi Picos, which cost about £5 or $4 each, to finish the task.

The reset glitch hack relies on pulsing the CPU reset line for approximately 100 nanoseconds. GliGli and Tiros found that this pulse can cause the chip to execute an instruction incorrectly rather than resetting. This allows the console to pass signature checks and boot unsigned code. Because the timing window changes depending on the motherboard revision, the glitch chip requires specific timing files programmed via JTAG.

Kennedy used one Pico running PicoFlasher to dump the console NAND in seconds. A second Pico running Pico-dirtyJTAG allowed him to load timing files onto a Matrix CoolRunner glitch chip. Kennedy noted that the Pico's PIO blocks run off a 133 MHz clock, providing about 7.5 ns of timing resolution.

PeerPressure, an alternative exploit requiring no soldering, emerged just before Kennedy shared his work.