The hack, released by an individual simply known as "Commodore4Eva" on the online forums they visit, allows the Xbox 360 to run "backup" discs. This individual recently released a similar hack for the previous generation Xbox, with confirmations of its operation.

A few months back, the Xbox hacking scene was hit by video showing the Xbox booting up with a backup disc, with no mod-chip inside. The hack targeted the DVD-ROM drive's firmware, and in effect, told the Xbox that all discs inserted were original. However, these hacks were not made public.

Commodore4Eva's hack comes with a price - the backup media must be DVD+DL discs, which, at this time, are still fairly expensive. This firmware hack also requires a number of steps to accomplish, ranging from changing the firmware on the DVD-ROM drive at least twice, extracing the original disc, recreating the disc image, and burning the disc with the proper bitsetting.

At this time, both the firmware hacks target the Samsung DVD-ROM drives, with attempts to get the other drives working. Microsoft uses different vendors in the construction of the Xbox and Xbox 360, so the DVD-ROM make must be confirmed before attempting this.

It is unknown at this time whether or not Microsoft is planning any action against this, as they did with modified original consoles. Owners of the original Xbox that logged into Xbox Live with a modified BIOS were almost immediately banned. In some cases, those that simple changed their hard drives also faced a similar consequence. This particular hack has the potential for use as a piracy tool, and Microsoft is well known for taking the offensive when it comes to software piracy.