[span class="headline"]Account pretexters plague Xbox Live
[/span]When Kevin Finisterre got his virtual guns handed to him in an online game of Halo 2 last Thursday, he called his opponents on their none-too-subtle hacks that skewed the game in their favor and turned the battle into a rout.
His opponents--who rarely died while racking up nearly 100 kills on Finisterre's team--didn't take the accusations well. Among a tirade of name-calling, one player threatened to steal his account, the security researcher told SecurityFocus.[span class="body"] Finisterre did not put much store in the threat until the next day, when he found his girlfriend's account--which he had been using the day before--kicked off the system with a message that someone else was using her gamer tag on Microsoft's service, Xbox Live. Finisterre confirmed that he could no longer log onto the service, and a message on the Account Management page indicated that the account had been suspended.[/p][/span][div style="margin-left: 40px;" class="quote"][font style="font-family: Verdana;" size="2"] "[span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(192, 0, 0); font-weight: bold;"]You guys (Microsoft and Bungie) can't even freeze our accounts. You are pathetic, a joke ... We aren't afraid of you one bit, so we will continue to steal accounts (and) max out credit cards until you find a way to stop us. [/span]"[/font]
[/div] [div class="quoteauthor"][div style="margin-left: 40px;"][font size="1"] A statement on the Web site of Clan Infamous[/font]
[/div][span class="body"] The players that have stolen accounts are not shy about their activities. Several clans--the teams of players that have banded together to play first-person shooter games--have boasted online about their ability to steal accounts.[/p] "We here at Infamous steal at least 10 accounts a day depending on there (sic) levels," claimed [a style="color: rgb(0, 0, 191);" href="vny!://www.oinfam0uso.moonfruit.com/" target="_blank"]a site belonging to Clan Infamous[/a], which bills itself as "the best account stealing + boosting clan" in Halo 2. "If you talk s**t we will mod on your account until it is banned. If the levels on it are good, we will use the Credit Card on your account to then change the gamer tag."[/p][/span]Full Story: [a style="color: rgb(0, 0, 191);" href="vny!://www.securityfocus.com/news/11452"]vny!://www.securityfocus.com/news/11452[/a]
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