5-year-old boy exposes Microsoft Xbox vulnerability

Apr 3, 2014

OCEAN BEACH - A young Ocean Beach boy is in the spotlight after he discovered a back door in to one of the most popular gaming systems in the world.

When 5-year-old Kristoffer Von Hassel is playing his Xbox, his feet don't touch the ground. But something he did has made the smartest guys at Microsoft pay attention.


A suddenly excited Kristoffer showed Dad that when he typed in a wrong password for his father’s account, it clicked to a password verification screen. By typing in space keys, then hitting enter, Kristoffer was able to get in through a back door.

It's not the first time Kristoffer has flashed his tech skills.

“He’s figured out vulnerabilities 3 or 4 times,” said Davies.

At age 1, Kristoffer got past the toddler lock screen on a cell phone by holding down the home key.

Father and son reported the bug to Microsoft.


Microsoft has come up with a fix and acknowledged Kristopher on their website in a list of security researchers that have helped make Microsoft online services more secure.

In a statement, Microsoft said, "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."

Kristoffer will receive four games, $50 and a year-long subscription to Xbox Live from Microsoft. He also knows what he now wants to be when he grows up: a gamer. His dad is leaning toward something in computer security.

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Micro$oft was quoted as saying, "We get up in Users' backdoors all the time."

Notice how "generous" one of the richest companies in the world is... :ermm:

Quote:

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Originally Posted by megabyteme

Notice how "generous" one of the richest companies in the world is... :ermm:

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Obviously he's too young for a Lamborghini.

Btw if you read the fine print as Microsoft already has the games lying around collecting dust and the Xbox Live subscription is worth basically only what they decide to charge you for it(ie, in actuality zero cost to them) then all they are truly giving him is $50,which is still infinitely more than inadvertently pressing the spacebar on a keyboard is worth or else I'd be off making my ill obtained fortune right now .

I suppose you could argue that bad press isn't worth the being cheap but rich people like to stick to the poor and then rub it in their faces for the sheer merriment of it so basically fuck you.:)

PS Idiotic thread totally copy/pasted so par for the course.:)

Hey Mary, if you are interested in a kid who likes probing, the news channel was nice enough to give out his email on the video still. :)

I have no interest in kids who can find doors where there were supposed to be none. I have neither the time nor resources to safeguard against any other escape routes.

thats funny stuff.

typical microsoft

Microsoft needs to watch out...