Hackers can recover credit card information from any Xbox 360 HDD

3/30/12 1:00pm

Microsoft has done a piss poor job of protecting our information from hackers, as a new report reveals that once a user has logged personal information on an Xbox 360 hard drive, it can be accessed indefinitely. Even if you had re-formatted the console hard drive and set it to factory settings. The report comes from Ashley Podhradsky of Drexel University who says Microsoft did a good job protecting its own information, but not the information of users.

"I think Microsoft has a longstanding pattern of this… When you go and reformat your computer, like a Windows system, it tells you that all of your data will be erased. In actuality that's not accurate—the data is still available... so when Microsoft tells you that you're resetting something, it's not accurate."

They discovered the issue by actually performing the hack themselves using a basic modding tool. There is little to protect casual users from this, butAshley also recommends hooking an old HDD up to your PC and using a sanitation program like Darik’s Boot & Nuke. My solution is to throw that old hard drive in a furnace. Considering I have thrown out at least two 20GB drives, this pretty much sucks.

» Source: http://kotaku.com/5897461/hackers-can-steal-credit-card-information-from-your-old-xbox-experts-tell-us
» Tagged In: #Drexel University, #Hackers, #HDD, #Microsoft, #modding tools, #sean hinz, #Xbox 360

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g1 DISCUSSIONS

jeshonlii

November 28, 2012 - 4:41am

Brilliant write up! I'm pleased to know about the credit card information from any Xbox 360 HDD by reading out your post. I was looking forward for such kind of info. thanks and keep it up!!!

ach processing

jeshonlii

November 28, 2012 - 4:40am

Brilliant write up! I'm pleased to know about the credit card information from any Xbox 360 HDD by reading out your post. I was looking forward for such kind of info. thanks and keep it up!!!

http://www.nationalprocessing.com/

darkhyrulelord

April 15, 2012 - 10:41pm

That....would suck if that ever happened to me. While I don't have a 360, I could imagine.

TrueRandomness

April 5, 2012 - 11:20pm

And this is why I always keep my hard drives.

Fiery_Elf

April 1, 2012 - 11:30pm

And people told me I had a hoarding problem, this is why I keep my stuff safely hidden in the depth of my closets :p

ToTs_00

March 30, 2012 - 9:03pm

Microsoft has all ready came out and said that this is bullshit since your credit card info is NEVER stored on your 360 internal memory at any time ever.

That One Guy Named X

March 30, 2012 - 8:26pm

BREAKING NEWS: HACKERS CAN STEAL FROM YOU!

Sean Capdeville

March 30, 2012 - 3:49pm

And now all the people laughing at me during the PSN hack feel silly. Just remember, no system is perfectly safe.

Jagoth

March 30, 2012 - 5:03pm

Reformat a harddrive five times in a row = Data unrecoverable. Sony keeping senesitive information in an unencrypted text file = fail

chrisat928

March 30, 2012 - 5:22pm

It was encrypted.

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Sean Hinz

g1 Since: Version 4 (2009)

Advantage Since: 2013

This section is kind of awkward. I need to write some interesting, but not bore you with my life story. Let's "get down to brass tacks", we all like video games. If you are down to play, feel free to hit me up online on any of my gaming networks. Oh and follow me on twitter for random musings. Besides that I guess the broad strokes include me being married, having an MBA, and owning a dog named Odie!