Kinect kracked

Stephen Withers
Monday, 08 November 2010 15:30

Your IT - Entertainment

It didn't take long for someone to find their way through the security features of Microsoft's Kinect controller for the Xbox 360, opening up the possibility of using the motion-sensing controller with other products.

As soon as Microsoft's Kinect motion-sensing controller for the Xbox 360 hit the market, Adafruit Industries offered a $US1000 bounty - subsequently increased to $US2000 - to the first person that could create and release a fully documented open source Kinect driver or application running on any operating system.

"First person / group to get RGB out with distance values being used wins" said the announcement. "All the code needs to be open source and/or public domain. Email us a link to the repository, we and some 'other' Kinect for Xbox 360 hackers will check it out - if it's good to go, you'll get the $2,000 bounty!"

'AlexP', an administrator of the NUI Group Community Forums, posted a message including a video clip apparently showing the Kinect's camera-angle motor operating under the control of a PC running Windows, and its accelerometer being read.

"Outlook looks good for other sensors (ie cameras and microphones) of the device," he said. There was no indication that he intended to claim or work towards claiming the bounty.

Other people have suggested that most of the Kinect functionality is implemented in software that runs on the Xbox 360. So while it may be possible to create drivers for various platforms (assuming Microsoft doesn't choose to engage in a whack-a-mole battle with hackers - as Apple does with the iPhone and those who seek to jailbreak it), a lot more work would be needed to duplicate the overall functionality.

There may be other barriers - please read on.