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Xbox Hacks: The A20 (2021)


In the early 2000s the Xbox was released. We are nearing the 20 year anniversary so its time to dive into the A20 "hack".

This console was full of vulnerabilities (or misconfiguration) from the software to the hardware and with such a low price point two decades ago for a computer - it was highly popular. I've attempted to build an over simplified drawing to depict this, since the image above incorrectly assumes the gate exists at the CPU level, when in 1984 it did not. A partial memory map of the original XboxSo you can see a normal Xbox boots into the secure state of the ROM.

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Photo of original xbox hacks

original xbox hacks

Photo of a20 cpu gate

a20 cpu gate