Microsoft investigates recent Xbox Live hacking claims; search comes up negative

Thursday, 22 March 2007

With a number of Xbox Live users recently claiming to be victims of fraudulent account activity, Microsoft launched an investigation, ultimately denying the possibility of a security breach. A recent story on CNET addressed the possibility that Microsoft's Xbox Live service may have possibly been hacked into by outside forces. The allegations came shortly after a number of gamers reported that their Live accounts had been broken into and that their credit card numbers were used to purchase Microsoft Points. One user in particular, a Kevin Finisterre, was central to their report. He claimed that an issue regarding a session with Halo 2 led to a lockout of his girlfriend's account. "I received a message on my Xbox that said: 'We are sorry we must log you out of Xbox Live because someone else is using your Gamertag,'" Finisterre wrote in an e-mail to CNET. Because little information was available to reporters at the time the story broke, several sites and blogs across the internet theorized that users such as Finisterre had simply been "phished", or tricked into revealing account information to other users. Some sites also provided the possibility that the Xbox Live service had been hacked, but a recent response from a Microsoft spokesperson denies these claims, according to a post on Kotaku. The representative claims that their investigations led them to the conclusion that neither Xbox Live nor Bungie.net had been hacked, since there was no evidence of a security breach. However, there is still the outstanding issue of fraudulent activity across Xbox Live. Microsoft suggests that any user with a question regarding the security of their Xbox Live account should contact an Xbox Customer Service Representative at 1-800-4-MY-XBOX. Source: Game Pro

 

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