A Dutch hacking group known as Team PI Coder claims to have successfully hacked Microsoft's Xbox 360.

In a posting the group said that it has successfully penetrated the Xbox's security systems, which they report are very similar to the older version of the console. The news comes less than two weeks after the Xbox launched in Europe. 

"Here we go with a nice extractor tool so that you can extract the dumps and check out the files," said the group.

"We even decided to release the source code so that you can figure out the file system and make even nicer tools and clean up our horrible looking code, cause we are lazy and old.

"Once you get past the protections and down to the raw bits on the disc, it's just the standard xboxdvdfs, however the offset and layer breakpoint are different."

The group has made tools available that allow users of the Xbox 360 to save game data and original coding. Team PI said that it has been able to dig out the raw data from the console for 13 Xbox 360 games.

Hacking and modifying the original Xbox so that it could run various applications has been a constant irritation to Microsoft. One man in the UK was convicted for selling the console with a range of pre-installed games in July 2005.

A spokesman for Microsoft insisted that there had been a series of improvements to the Xbox 360 to protect it against cracking.

He said that hardware on the system only allows Microsoft certified and signed programs to run on the console. Copied games would not be recognised by the system and would not run.