On Friday we posted the story of Julias Jackson, an 11 year old autistic boy who had his account banned on Xbox LIVE for ‘cheating’ at Halo 3. Julias’ mother took issue with this, contacting the media with the claim that her son was banned unfairly – turns out she’s performed quite the u-turn. Apparently Julias did cheat, and his account was modified in order to gain achievements – making the ban legitimate. More »
Sure, it’s now been shown you can steal Halo 3′s highly-prized Recon Armour. But really, who gives a fig about a bunch of 1s and 0s? Not us. No, if you want to impress us with your thievery, you’ve got to steal a real set of Halo 3 Recon Armour. Like this one, which was hand-crafted by a chap going by the name Belakor. OK, so it’s just a helmet and not the full set of armour, but does that take away from the impressiveness of the thing? Only a little, my friends. Only a little. Really real and wearable Halo 3 Recon helmet [X3F]
Skyluss, a member of pro-gaming Team vBi, reported over the weekend that his Xbox Live account has been hacked… again. Apparently the hacker was a little envious of the Recon Armour Bungie had bestowed upon Skyluss and decided to take it for a spin him or herself.
The Halo 3 gamer writes in the vBi forums that he thinks this latest hack wasn’t a product of social hacking (i.e. sweet-talking a password out of a stupid customer support person) but a genuine security flaw in Microsoft’s Live service.
Skyluss says he’s changed the passwords on his account three times in the past month so he’s sure it’s not an issue of someone having his password. Whether it is a security flaw in the system or an issue with customer support the bottom line is that there is a problem, one that I hope Microsoft is on top of.
I emailed XBL Director Larry Hyrb to see if Skyluss high-profile account problems are being investigated, as the gamer was told after receiving a whole lot of run around and not a lot of answers. Hyrb told me that their security team has indeed launched an investigation and that he has been in touch with the gamer personally.
My Gift, My Curse [Team VBI, thanks Christopher]
