Tag Archive for: xbox

Jacksonville mom ‘didn’t know son’s Xbox could connect to social media’ after he threaten day care shooting, police say


JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – A Jacksonville teenager was arrested Friday after police said he threatened to shoot up a daycare center in San Marco. Investigators said he posted the threat on a gaming chatroom using his Xbox.

After police spoke to the teenager’s mother about what her son did, she told police she had no idea her son could use his gaming system to communicate on social media.

To many parents, an Xbox is just a gaming system. But in reality, the Xbox is a computer much like a desktop hard drive.

An Xbox is a gaming system that can be linked to the internet to download games and movies, and even connect to social media. This was evident when Jacksonville police showed up at an apartment inside this Northside complex and arrested a 15-year-old boy.

Related: Jacksonville teen used Xbox to threaten day care shooting, police say

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That’s when the boy’s mother told police she had no idea her son’s gaming console could connect to social media.

News4JAX spoke with cyber security expert Chris Hamer who said this should be a wake-up call for all parents who are not computer savvy.

“Parents need to be aware that these consoles are fully-fledged computers with the capacity of surfing the internet and communicating in both directions,” Hamer said. “That issue is if you leave your child alone with an Xbox or PlayStation, not only can they present a credible threat to the outside world but they can also be groomed by people who deliberately go into the chatroom, game rooms, and the lobbies for these different programs to find their next victim.”

So in addition to monitoring your child’s activity on the home computer or smartphone — parents are being urged to monitor their kids’ activities on gaming consoles.

Hamer said while parents may not be too computer savvy, kids who are caught posting threats online are also not as computer savvy as they may think.

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“The individuals that are making less than intelligent decisions as to their activities online may or may not be aware that their IP addresses can be tracked right to their provider and thus to their house,” Hamer said.

One tip parents should know is that it doesn’t matter if you’re using a home computer, a cell…

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Bug Allowed Hackers to Get Anyone’s Email Address on Xbox Live


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Image: JUNG YEON-JE/AFP via Getty Images

A serious flaw in Xbox Live allowed hackers to easily find out the email address used to register any Xbox gamertag. 

Last week, an anonymous hacker reached out to Motherboard claiming to be able to discover the email behind anybody’s Xbox gamertag. By default email addresses linked to gamertags are private. Motherboard was able to verify the existence of the vulnerability by providing the hacker with two gamertags, including one created just a few minutes earlier for testing purposes. The hacker sent back the email address used to register the two accounts within seconds. 

A second anonymous hacker said that the bug was in the Xbox Live enforcement portal, where gamers can contact the company’s team that polices the Xbox online community. 

After Motherboard contacted Microsoft last week, the company patched the bug. Initially, the Microsoft Security Response Center, or MSRC, a part of the company that protects customers from being harmed by security vulnerabilities in Microsoft’s products and software, didn’t consider the bug to be a serious security risk.

“We received multiple reports regarding this and have informed the appropriate team about the issue and will let them address this as needed,” the MSRC said in an email on Monday, responding to Motherboard’s bug report. “An email may be considered sensitive information, however, since it provides nothing else to identify the issuer, is not something that meets MSRC bar for service. As such, MSRC is not tracking the issue and will leave it to the product group to determine a mitigation as needed.”

On Tuesday, a Microsoft spokesperson confirmed that the company “released an update to help protect customers.”

Do you, or did you used to, work at Microsoft? Do you know anything else about the company? We’d love to hear from you. Using a non-work phone or computer, you can contact Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai securely on Signal at +1 917 257 1382, on Wickr at lorenzofb, OTR chat at [email protected], or email [email protected].

The hacker who alerted Motherboard of the bug asked us to publish this story only after a fix. 

“If you publish the article before it’s patched it will get…

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‘NBA 2K18’ gets emergency patch to fix data-wiping Xbox One bug – Yahoo Finance UK


Yahoo Finance UK

'NBA 2K18' gets emergency patch to fix data-wiping Xbox One bug
Yahoo Finance UK
2K Sports' latest basketball title, NBA 2K18, had a serious zero day bug that wiped away user progress, items and in-game currency in the online MyCareer mode. While it reportedly only affects players on Xbox One, both console versions are got a patch

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