Geoff Keighley Says His Xbox Account Was “Hacked”

Geoff Keighley, videogame journo and host of Spike TV’s GTTV has had one of his Xbox 360 accounts hacked under what appears to be the same conditions as we’ve been reporting for a week or two now.

“Fun times,” he tweeted, “looks like one of my XBOX Live accounts was just hacked and someone had fun buying a lot of ‘GOLD JUMBO PACKS, today.”

Sounds like the MO that has been widely reported on gaming forums for a while, but ignored by the majority of the press until The Sun mishandled the situation by inferring that those affected were the result of phishing attacks.

It’s becoming clearer that this isn’t the case.

Stephen Toulouse, Xbox LIVE Director of Policy and Enforcement replied to Geoff rather quickly. “Shoot me a mail with the tag,” he said. Geoff has since tweeted that his account will be locked for “25 days” whilst Microsoft investigate. This appears to be the minimum.

I too had my Xbox Live account hacked, although it was several months ago. Upon regaining control of it, after a very friendly chat with Xbox Support in Ireland and a lengthy wait, the only indication of the hack was that the last played game was FIFA 11. I have never owned FIFA 11 on 360.

I was lucky enough that I didn’t lose any money (my credit card was never linked to Xbox Live and I can’t be sure there were points on my account before the hack) but regaining access to my own Gamertag, and linking it back up to the correct email address, was a lengthy and frustrating process. I never shared any personal information with anyone and in my case Microsoft Support themselves repeatedly referred to the issue as a hack.

If there is any chance that this latest spate of suspicious FIFA-related account activity might be down to an external intrusion via some exploit other than user indiscretion, Microsoft absolutely needs to address it in a much more comprehensive manner than they have been so far.

Let’s hope this high profile case brings Microsoft to comment accordingly.

43 Comments

  1. Nice to see Microsoft applying the News International approach to problem solving and information control:

    Despite indications to the contrary, deny all responsibility until the evidence is utterly, utterly, irrefutable.

    Bad form.
    Bad show boys.

  2. Today, my account was compromised, e-mail account changed, and billed 10,000 MS points using my linked CC. Microsoft is investigating it and I am sure it will be resolved. However, I believe Microsoft is sweeping something under the rug. In early November, my co-worker told me his accounted was hacked, as 6,000 points were added to his account. And the day before Thanksgiving my friend had a similar problem, with someone using his points to buy FIFA DLC (he doesn’t even own FIFA). These two guys are very tech-oriented people, but even still, I thought maybe they just clicked a bad link, or shared a common-link between forum names/passwords. That was, until today – when MY account became compromised.
    Microsoft claims there was no security issue, and these victims are just falling for phishing attempts.
    For a little background: I am an IT administrator at a 100+ user company. I have my CCNA, Comp TIA – A+ Hardware, MCITP, and more. My email account used for my XBox Live account is solely used for Xbox Live. I have never used it anywhere else. My password was over 10 characters long, including uppercase, lowercase, and numbers. I did not, and would not fall for any phishing attempt. I have had the same XBox Live account since the original Xbox and never as much as a blip with problems.
    The influx of Xbox Live users that this occurred to recently seem to be tech savvy people like myself. I do not accept Microsoft’s response as simple ‘phishing.’ There has to be more going on here. I want a better official response from MS. And until then, I advise you all to change your xbox live/windows live ID password.

  3. If I was a live user i’d definitely be a little bit on edge right now tbh. I understand microsoft not taking everything down with no proof that it is hacking – makes basic sense, but something weird is happening.

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