Topic: Xbox live gold accounts hacked by social engineering

[Flames_of_chaos]

Source

The basic idea is that a jerk picks up a phone, calls tech support, and gains access to your account by tricking the phone representative into handing out password information. It’s quick, simple, and horribly easy to do. Naturally, being a consistently popular game on Xbox Live has its repercussions, and a Bungie employee has had to deal with this problem directly.

[KDR_11k]

Definitely PEBCAK.

[Bill Aurion]

Stuff like this is just another problem on the long list that digital distribution has to face...

[Flames_of_chaos]

It's also a problem when customer service that MS hires is so stupid.

[Deguello]

It's also a vindication of the "inferior" online scheme that Nintendo uses.  Friend codes and it being free tamps down on identity theft as such.

[Morari]

Social engineering isn't really hacking, y'know. It's just taking advantage of stupid people. Politicians and priests do it almost every day.

[vudu]

Politicians and priests do it almost every day.

This isn't going to end well.

[Flames_of_chaos]

Social engineering isn't really hacking, y'know. It's just taking advantage of stupid people. Politicians and priests do it almost every day.

Yeah I know that but if the stupid people are Microsoft customer support to gain access of a account and then modifying everything in that account after you get access is hacking to me.

[SixthAngel]

Social engineering isn't really hacking, y'know. It's just taking advantage of stupid people. Politicians and priests do it almost every day.

Brains are computers (in chinese computer it literally electric brain) thus these are uber hackers.  It is only a matter of time before these xbox live reps start getting a blue screen of death and become filled with viruses from these geniuses.  Norton better come out with a firewall for me stat.

[KDR_11k]

Social engineering is hacking and the most powerful form even. Yet people wonder why admins hate users so much...

[Morari]

Nope, wrong. Not hacking. It is, at best, a con. Asking someone for their password and having them give it to you is not hacking. Social engineering may be used to great effect alongside hacking, or even as a replacement to hacking, but it is in no way hacking. Would finding someone's password wrote down and hidden under the keyboard be considered hacking? Nope, and neither is this.

[Stogi]

Agreed. This is manipulation.

[GoldenPhoenix]

Social engineering isn't really hacking, y'know. It's just taking advantage of stupid people. Politicians and priests do it almost every day.

Or people on message boards.