A hacked Xbox 360 is a pretty essential piece of kit these days, thanks in no small part to the fact that there are many games for the system which are no longer available to download legitimately, so side-loading them onto a hacked console is the only way to enjoy them in 2025.
Previously, modding your Xbox 360 was quite an involved process, but a new soft mod enables you to get unsigned code running with nothing more than a USB stick, some special software and a digital copy of the Rock Band Blitz trial version.
As highlighted by Modern Vintage Gamer, the new 'Hypervisor Hack' entitled BadUpdate can be installed on any Xbox 360 console—even the later, more secure Winchester revisions running on the latest system firmware (17559).
Previously, it was believed this kind of exploit required a physical copy of Tony Hawk's American Wasteland, as the exploit uses the game's save file to run. However, it has since been pointed out that you can simply download a trial Xbox 360 title to your USB stick (the aforementioned Rock Band Blitz) and run the exploit that way. Trial versions, in case you didn't know, are essentially the entire game, with full functionality locked behind a microtransaction.
The significant upside to using this exploit is that there's no internal modification required on the console itself, and it's totally reversible. That second point is actually related to one of the big downsides—the mod isn't persistent, so you'll need to do it each and every time you power down your Xbox 360. Couple this with the fact that it takes about 10 to 15 minutes to execute the exploit, and it becomes somewhat less appealing. You'll also need to patch your homebrew executables in order to make them work.
Even taking all of this into account, the fact that you can now hack an Xbox 360 using nothing but a FAT32-formatted USB thumbstick is a remarkable achievement.