This is the most fast paced game of Tetrs I have ever seen a human being play. This guy makes Tetris look like breathing, some re arguing that it may be a hack but as the vid plays longer you can see him make some errors and then correct for them. Really incredible.

There has been rumors floating around that the upcoming killer app Warhawk for the PS3 can be played even though you were not invited to the party. It turns out that this is no longer a rumor, yet true and very plausible. Instructions have been posted in a PS3 forum that we at Loot Ninja stumbled across. As a reputable gaming site and God fearing folk, we do not condone the stealing or hacking of copyrighted material gaming or otherwise. On the contrary, you might. Here is the link. Hint: Scroll down. Hint: Dodongo dislikes smoke.

We are praying for you.

Major Nelson did some research, and spoke with Kevin Finisterre, who discovered the hack. What he came up with is something I could have told you years ago: Xbox Support is majorly retarded. People didn’t hack into the system, and Bungie.net wasn’t subject to attack. What really happened is called Pre-Texting. Malicious users called into Xbox Support pretending to be other users to get their account information. They would call multiple times, getting a bit of information each time, until they could get both the Live ID email and the password.

From Major’s site:

Kevin gave me a call directly and once I realized what he was talking about (he sent me some painful-to-listen-to audio files) I confirmed that the team is fully aware of this issue. They are examining the policies, and have already begun re-training the support staff and partners to help make sure we reduce this type of social engineering attack.

There’s no other way to say it; this situation shouldn’t have happened. Our customers deserve better.

It’s good to see Microsoft admit there is a problem. Hopefully this pushes them to allow the removal of credit cards from the system. Hopefully that’s something that gets taken care of in the Xbox Live downtime coming up soon. And hopefully they get some people at Xbox Support who have any idea what they’re talking about.

Major Nelson lets us know that Xbox Live, Xbox.com, and the Xbox forums will be down for a scheduled maintenance period on Tuesday, March 27, 2007 from 0000 to 1400 PST (that’s 3am to 5pm EST for those keeping score). That’s a hefty time for everything to be down, don’t you think? Most of the scheduled maintenance times are 3 hours.

From Major’s article…

Xbox Live, Xbox.com and the Xbox forums will be undergoing scheduled maintenance on Tuesday March 27th (next week) from 0000 to 1400 PT. As a result of this maintenance, Xbox Live, Xbox.com and the Xbox forums will be unavailable during this time. I thought I’d give you enough time to plan next weeks gaming schedule. What to do while you can’t hop on Xbox Live? Xbox.com has you covered with this list. This is purely ‘back end’ work that we scheduled months ago. This is not a dashboard update…that will happen later this Spring.

I don’t buy this being so scheduled. In my opinion, this is due to the Xbox Live Hack we’ve been hearing about, that Microsoft claims never happened. I seem to recall Major saying the scheduled maintenance happens every so often, and this seems pretty quick after the downtime in late February. And for it being down for 14 hours, that seems pretty major to me. This is only speculation, but that’s my opinion.

We reported earlier on the hack of Bungie.net that opened up Xbox Live and user’s credit cards to theft.

Well, Microsoft responded to Kotaku in true MS fashion. No direct answer of what’s going on, no confirmation of the attack, just sort-of brushing it away to the side. Just like they did when myself and a few other users contacted them a bunch to get our credit cards removed from their systems.

Recently, there have been reports of fraudulent activity and account theft taking place on the Xbox LIVE network. Security is a top priority for Xbox LIVE, and we are actively investigating all reports of fraudulent behavior and theft. Any customer with a question about the security of their Xbox LIVE account should contact 1-800-4-MY-Xbox, and
an Xbox Customer Service Representative will help them understand our security policies and procedures.

Either a professional security consultant misinterpreted his data and blew it out of proportion, or Microsoft is dodging the bullet here again. You be the judge.

Ruh Roh Raggy… Kotaku is reporting (from ZDNet) that Xbox Live has been hacked. Apparently, a group of hackers got into Bungie.net and hacked their way through the Live ID system to get into Xbox Live. They’re using their new-found power to steal Microsoft Points for Xbox Live users and also buy new points with their credit cards on file.

According to Kevin Finisterre, a security researcher at Digital Munition, Microsoft Tech confirmed that “accounts are being stolen” and that “Hackers have control of Xbox live and there is nothing we can do about it”.

Ummm, nothing you can do about? Come on, Microsoft. There’s a lot you can do. For starters, allow users to remove their credit card information from their accounts. This has been a problem with Xbox Live since the beginning. Also, it’s your system. Shut it down and fix the leak. I’m sure users will understand that it got hacked, and you’re preventing their money being stolen by having it down for a few hours or a day.