Xbox 360 Hackers Snapped

Three Americans have been charged with selling Xbox 360s illegally modified (or chipped) to play pirated games.

The game consoles were reportedly modified with a new control chip and a 250 gigabyte hard drive. The embedded software on the chip reportedly creates a new start menu to play any of a number of pirated games.

The chips and hard drives apparently allowed the user to copy rented or borrowed games onto the consoles for future playback.
The case began when private investigators purchased a modified Xbox game console, pre-loaded with several copyrighted games, from a retail game store which accepted USD$265 to have a modification chip, hard drive and 77 pirated games installed in an Xbox.