Security problems are usually discovered by geeks and people with a lot of time on their hands, but this is not always the case. In fact a flaw in the security of Xbox One was recently discovered by a five year old boy! While using his father’s console, Kristoffer Von Hassel was able to log into his dad’s account without having to enter the password used to protect it. The boy was understandably excited at the prospect of gaining unfettered access to the account: “I was, like, “yeah!” ” he said.
The hack was incredibly simple. After having been presented with the password screen and entering an incorrect password, Kristoffer found out that just by filling up the password field with spaces he was able to log in. The flaw was then reported by Kristoffer’s father.
Microsoft has already fixed the problem and by way of thanks has given Kristoffer a year’s subscription to Xbox Live, $50 and four games. He also appears in the list of “Security Researchers” for March on TechNet.
The company issued a statement saying “We’re always listening to our customers and thank them for bringing issues to our attention. We take security seriously at Xbox and fixed the issue as soon as we learned about it.”
