Xbox 360 jailbreak gets easier with Bad Update 1.2, boosting success rate to 80% and cutting run times
Bad Update is a no-solder jailbreak for the Xbox 360 that lets you run homebrew apps without opening the console. You simply use a USB stick and a specific game, in this case, Rock Band Blitz, to trigger it.
The problem up until now is that it’s been a bit of a pain to run the exploit. It works in three stages, and Stage 3, the “final unlock,” has always had a low success rate. However, with the new Bad Update 1.2, the success rate has jumped to 80%.
Many subject experts on YouTube have posted detailed videos with proof that the new Bad Update version is more stable and faster to run. The YouTube channel MrMario2011 demonstrated that the Xbox 360 exploit succeeded 9 out of 10 times, with Stage 3 completion times ranging from as low as 9 seconds to as high as 9 minutes 30 seconds. They also ran the exploit in real time during the video, completing Stage 3 in 7.04 seconds, they claimed.
The exploit still works the same way. You prepare a USB drive with the Bad Update files and launch a trigger game like Rock Band Blitz on a stock Xbox 360. It runs in three stages, with Stage 3 taking control so you can run homebrew.
The Xbox 360 uses encryption to protect certain parts of its system from being modified. A whitening value is essentially a number that gets mixed into the encryption process, similar to a key or seed, to make the output look more random and harder to guess. In older versions of Bad Update, Stage 3 had to figure out this value on the fly by trial and error every time you ran the exploit. This was slow and unreliable because there are many possible whitening values, and guessing the right one could take seconds, minutes, or even hours.
In v1.2, KMX 360, the developer of the exploit, precomputed these values, boosting the success rate to about 80% and significantly reducing run times. Once Stage 3 succeeds, your chosen payload launches, allowing you to use custom dashboards, emulators, and backups without soldering or opening the console.
MVG, short for Modern Vintage Gamer on YouTube, also tested the exploit in real time. In two of their attempts, the exploit completed in about 33 seconds in one run and about 44 seconds in the other. You can watch both videos linked below if you want to see how the new version works.
Overall, it is a significant step in making the non-soldering jailbreak process easier to execute. In turn, allowing a wider audience to get more out of an old console which they already own.
