Xbox-linux.sourceforge.net reports that the 007:AUF save game hack was released on March-29-03, to a lot of skepticism, mostly due to the proximity to April Fools day! It turned out that the hack was real, and now the full details of how it works are being revealed. The author of the hack never explained how it worked, and some effort was made to make reverse engineering it difficult. Nevertheless, after some quick analysis, it was figured out within a few days of being released.

The information has been kept secret for some time now, but since the person named free-x on xboxhacker.net has released both the secret key and a version of the hack which is not obfuscated (for mechassault), it seems this is a reasonable time to explain how the original hack worked. Please note that there is no guarantee that all the information in this document is correct. This is just an educated analysis.