Well, I’m sort of glad they didn’t included dedicated servers now. We can all use this as an example of why we want them.

Hmm… tbh I wonder if this is more the game’s QA being shit or people just paying it more attention because it’s MW2. I’d imagine a bit of both.

Just a correction, these are not glitches, they are mods. They aren’t caused by a weakness or exploitable bug, they are caused by people with JTAG Xbox 360′s (hardmodded consoles that can run unsigned, homebrew code) editing files that are fully locked out to the normal player, and subject to checksums every time they go online that a retail 360 will not pass. The mod is created by editing the account’s MPdata files on your 360′s cache, changing certain values (Basically the same as PC console commands) on the file, then using the JTAG 360 to get the files online. The part that makes it all the more dickish is that mods like this are ‘infectious’, a person intending to infect others will start a public lobby and force host. When the game starts a part of all the player’s game cache is synced to the hosts, meaning that the edited MPdata is given to all players in that lobby. There are two separate modded files, one is specific to each game and is updated every time you join or leave, the other will not reset until you turn off the Xbox. If you join a modded lobby, you recieve the more temporary file and when you leave the game you will no longer have the edited data. If however, the original host with both modded files leaves the game causing a host migration, the player that is made the new host receives the more permanent file, meaning that they in turn begin infecting others.

There are actually quite a few mods like this at the moment, essentially any dvar can be modified and uploaded by those with JTAG 360′s, and there’s a dvar for every single thing on the game. A popular one to edit is XP, awarding the exact amount needed to go from level 1 to 70 and unlock Prestige Mode. People host the games, and the players ‘lucky’ enough to get in simply get a kill, leave, Prestige, re-join, and repeat until they are at the 10th Prestige level 70. I’ve seen people offering £100 via Paypal to get into a game, and scammers are making literally thousands of dollars in Xbox Live codes, and MSP.

I do hope that was all informative and, like, stuff.

Wow, big wall of text is bigger than I thought.

No, the fact these files can infect others IS a massive vulnerability. No, a normal user can’t do it – but that doesn’t excuse it being possible.

An exploit is exactly that – something that shouldn’t happen.

A JTAG Xbox can run any unsigned edited code. You can use the console to edit anything that runs code from the 360′s hard drive from online settings to the dashboard itself. Whilst I agree with you that exploits shouldn’t be able to happen, essentially the only way to prevent the JTAG mod is to cloud source the entire console OS and all files found on the hard drive, and even that could be edited to a certain degree.

What I’d love to know is why these files are even transferred? This would all be avoided if the files were taken locally – which seeing as the game has no mod support, should exist, surely? Unless I’m misunderstanding what’s going on.

I can’t answer that one certainly, I mod my 360 offline only because I’m not a dick. From what I understand every online multiplayer game uses similar files that can be played with in the same way, but with MW2 the amount of mods being released is going to be higher because it’s MW2. The ironic thing is that the amount of JTAG owners developing the mods is in single figures, if not one certain community member.