Isolated XBox Live Accounts Breached

Via Playfuls.com -

Following the increasing concern about the safety of the 6 million Xbox Live accounts, Microsoft issued a press release in which admits the existence of some minor breaches.

A recent story posted on CNET.com spoke about the fact that Microsoft's Xbox Live service may have 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, called Kevin Finisterre, complained in detail about his troubles. 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 declared in an e-mail to CNET.

Due to the lack of information for reporters at the time the story came out, several sites and blogs across the Web 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.

Microsoft promptly issued a press release, in which the company confirmed the existence of some isolated cases of “phishing”, but also underlined that the Xbox Live accounts in general are not affected.

“Despite some recent reports and speculation, we want to reassure all of our 6 million Xbox Live members that we have looked into the situation and found no evidence of any compromise of the security of Bungie.net or our LIVE network. There have been a few isolated incidents where malicious users have been attempting to draw personal information from unsuspecting users and use it to gain access to their LIVE account. We think this is a good time to remind our members that they should never give out any of their personal information.”

“To our knowledge, there has been no compromise of the Xbox LIVE network. To our knowledge, no credit card or other personal information was exposed.”