Xbox Live players get revenge by booting others off

Updated 4:30 p.m. PST with latest Microsoft comment.

Some Xbox Live players are finding that winning has its drawbacks.

Microsoft said it is investigating reports that people are using malicious software to disrupt Xbox Live players' Internet connections in malicious attacks.

"In our continued effort to help provide a safer and more secure experience for our community of more than 17 million members, we are investigating reports of a malicious Web site that attempts to lure Xbox LIVE members into providing personal information," Microsoft said in a statement on Friday.

"Phishing is an unfortunate and common threat on the Internet, and this problem is not related to the Xbox LIVE service," the statement said. "We encourage people to only do business with trusted Web sites and never enter personal information on unfamiliar sites."

Malicious software is being used by attackers to do things like temporarily shut down a game player's console or even an entire game with a denial-of-service attack targeting the IP address, according to Chris Boyd, director of malware research at Facetime Communications, the BBC News reported on Friday.

Sophisticated hackers are selling their Xbox Live attack services to others via the Internet underground for as little as $20, the report said.

[coprophilous]

Wow. You have to be a real tool to do that.

[bakedpatato]

never been on Live or played multiplayer games have you?
some people do anything to be "31337"

[carlg113]

hahaha you must be a super geek to pay twenty bucks to get payback on some random person who beat you on xbox live!

if someone did that to me i would consider myself a double winner!

[3rdalbum]

They should ship the Xbox 360 with a firewall next time :-)

[Aitrusskyy]

Lol firewall? The firewall might block the DoS attack but even if it does your connection can still be flooded and you are unable to do anything online. Firewall unfortunately won't help. I've seen this happen already in Counter Strike Source for PC. Someone hijacked a gaming server then used it to DoS it's own administrators and other players...

Gaming servers have a bit of a powerful connection and can easily be used to flood a single users connection.

[Zarland]

Xbox live should give a special achievement for players who are getting hacked after beating someone so bad in a game, that the other player spends more than 4 months of subscription ($20) to hack the winner?s machine.

[peterwhite]

Sad what some people resort to, I still remember winning a very close Halo 2 PUBLIC match as three yahoos were flying around the map in a slayer game ... then I realized (a) they were 'cloning' themselves on the beach and (b) you could anticipate movement and use MELEE to kill them. Their fourth didn't approve of their methods and quit out early but my side won 50 to 48. Afterwards they tried to apologize for a bad network connection and suggested a rematch ... I hope they were eventually banned as Game Tags and SN# XBOXs.

[bcas400e]

Why is anybody surprised a Microsoft based product is being hacked?

I am just surprised it took this long to happen!

[inachu]

This is not all too surprising.
Back when Windows 98 was still hailed as the best Operating system when XP was still in beta I remember playing Quake 1 and people also used the methods to send a malformed IP packet to make a persons WIndows 98/NT 4 box bluescreen.

This tool was also combned with AOHELL hack tools that let you force a person to reboot their PC. This was back in 1994-1997 days. But it was considered just for fun to keep jerks who keep joining your chatroom or Quake game server. Microsoft later patched this and other things.

[Wookiee-1138]

I've never claimed to be immune to fanboyism, and it's BS like this that makes me feel somewhat justified in looking down on the xbox 3fixme and it's racist, foul-mouthed 13 year old users.

[peterwhite]

Wow, that really sucks - the other night most of my friends were unavailable for our weekly game night and so I tried my hand at Gears of War 2 PUBLIC. In two matches I suffered at the hands of idiots - first the standard standby ... we shuffle and fire at trashcans while being killed or torched by invisible (too fast to see) enemies. In another match the action was very odd with two players seemingly indestructable - in fact - three of the 'team members' dropped out but the two solo's still beat us all in a game of execution. Pretty sad and lame. The rest of the night wasn't bad - you win some / lose some and it was an overall good night but those two games were even more frustrating for a very BIG reason.

FEEDBACK ??? On Gears2 you're only allowed to submit feedback on friends / teammates - that really makes NO SENSE AT ALL.

Just my two cents ... have a nice day!