Daily Archives: January 22, 2011

Xbox

Microsoft Lowering Prices on Older Xboxes

Microsoft apparently held a media roundtable Monday night after its Xbox press event, confirming that it will eventually phase out its existing models in favor of the new “slim” model.

My colleague Dean Takahashi at VentureBeat reported:
“The new Xbox 360 with a 250-gigabyte hard drive and the smaller black design will sell for $299,” Takahashi wrote. “The older Xbox 360 Elite console with a 120-gigabyte hard drive will sell for $249. And the Xbox 360 Arcade console, which does not have a hard drive, will sell for $149. The Elite and Arcade consoles will be sold until existing supplies run out.”

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Microsoft has not said if it will release versions of the Elite or Arcade models with the new design. The latest Xbox costs $299, and will be available this week.

To date, Microsoft still has not released a price for the Xbox Kinect peripheral; Aaron Greenberg, an Xbox product manager, denied reports that the Kinect’s price had been set. Gamestop reportedly posted a Web page claiming that it would be priced at $149.

“No Kinect price announced yet, retail price estimates are purely speculative, final price & pack-in details are not yet determined,” Greenberg tweeted.

Microsoft’s own official Twitter account, however, has revealed that Kinect will go on sale on Nov. 4, backed by 16 launch titles. Microsoft will begin selling the new slim Xbox in Europe on July 16.

Microsoft

Passware Warns of Microsoft Risk

Password-recovery experts at Passware warned Friday that the security of Microsoft’s Bitlocker whole-disk encryption is seriously compromised on a computer configured to use sleep mode. The same is true of the open-source TrueCrypt whole-disk encryption tool.

The company’s Passware Kit Forensic 1.03 can “decrypt hard disks encrypted with BitLocker or TrueCrypt in a matter of minutes if the target computer is running”. If the computer is powered off decryption can still be accomplished by analyzing the file hiberfil.sys, which is created by Windows when the system enters sleep mode. According to the company, any computer that has hibernated even once with a mounted TrueCrypt or BitLocker hard drive is vulnerable, as their product can “instantly decrypt the hard disk even if the computer is no longer running”.

It’s worth noting that BitLocker Drive Encryption is only present in Windows 7 and Windows Vista, not in any earlier edition. And only the Enterprise and Ultimate editions of those platforms include BitLocker support. ZoneAlarm DataLock, a third-party whole-disk encryption product, supports all current versions of Windows including Windows XP. During the initial encryption stage DataLock disables hibernation. Afterward it interacts with the hibernation feature so that the encryption password is required on waking from hibernation.

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If you do use BitLocker or TrueCrypt, you need to configure the encrypted system so it doesn’t accidentally go into sleep mode. Using the Power Options applet in control panel, set “Put the computer to sleep” to “Never”. If the computer has a sleep button, set “When I press the sleep button” to “Do nothing”. And be very sure you never choose “Sleep” from the options menu for the shutdown button.