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Xbox Live hacker: 'All accounts are open' to attacks [update]
He only had access for a limited period, but a self-proclaimed "hacker" managed to finagle his way into Xbox Live policy enforcement lead Stephen Toulouse's Xbox Live Gold account over the weekend. The hacker calls himself "Predator," and has created a six-minute video showing off his exploits. Predator allegedly used "social engineering techniques" and didn't employ any "programs," he told Joystiq this afternoon. Predator was able to alter Xbox Live account information after resetting Toulouse's password, all through Toulouse's personal website host, Network Solutions. But despite his actions, "Predator" says he didn't go do it for malicious reasons. "I'm simply letting them know I'm willing to help them secure accounts from future hackers," he explained. "All accounts are open for hacking." That last statement rings especially true in light of last year's hacking of Larry "Major Nelson" Hryb's Xbox Live account. And this isn't his first success, Predator claims. "I've done many illegal things on Xbox -- I've taken Trixie360's account, 15 Original Gamertags, 4 H3 Pro's [Halo 3 pros], and a few randoms," he told us. He also notes in his video (which has been pulled) that he's had "over 35" console bans, and points out that, as a result, Toulouse "had it coming, man." Predator, however, remains unconcerned about his own fate. He notes after explaining his past exploits that nothing has happened to him so far. Predator says his offer to help with Xbox Live security stands. Update: We spoke with Stephen Toulouse, who offered his comments on the incident. Additionally, the video after the break has been removed as it is no longer available on YouTube.
MyGamerCard.net service shut down
One of the longest running unofficial services for Xbox 360 users has been shut down. MyGamerCard.net, which has been around as long as the Xbox 360 itself, has closed its virtual doors. Founder Jason Young -- known to most of us by his Gamertag, Morgon -- has posted a lengthy goodbye on the site, explaining his reasons for the shutdown, which includes the service's leaderboards. According to Young, the "love for community has been lost by Microsoft," and its many community-based projects, including the Xbox Community Developer Program, have "stagnated." He adds that some sites have been using non-kosher methods to scrape data from Xbox.com, a practice Microsoft has allegedly done little to quell, but one Young says shows a "lack of respect" nonetheless. Faced with this sort of unscrupulous competition, as well as a poor advertising environment, he was forced to shut down the service after paying half of MGC's costs himself for over a year. Both Joystiq and its community have enjoyed the ever expanding service since its inception. Initially offering GamerCards that could be posted onto websites and forums, MGC expanded to offer leaderboards, Achievement completion percentages and even daily gaming news. In fact, looking back at my tenure at Joystiq's former Xbox site, Xbox 360 Fanboy, I can testify that many of our community projects wouldn't have been possible without it. Those wishing to keep up with Young can do so on Xbox Live or Twitter.
Xbox 360's 'boot to disc' option is back, Gamercards get a makeover
Back in early November, just after Microsoft dropped a new, new Xbox Dashboard on us, the console's ability to load into games at startup -- known as the "boot to disc" option" -- was disabled. Sure, crazy workarounds existed (like, say, moving the cursor to "Play Disc" and hitting the A button), but what if you only have one thumb and limited time? As promised, the functionality is returning this week. Major Nelson announced as much this morning, noting that, like before, the boot to disc option will be accessible via System Settings on your Xbox's Dash -- users will be given a prompt for said update. Additionally, this Thursday, an update will be applied to Gamercards on Xbox.com. As pictured to the left, the yellow and light grey of Gamercards past will be replaced by a new black and dark grey color scheme -- we're calling them "Gamercards at Night" -- and they'll lose their "zone information." With any luck, a smoking jacket and pipe will be added in the coming months. A Gamercard's gotta accessorize! [Thanks, Freddie]
Microsoft's Major Nelson Gamercard cracked by hacker [update]
Microsoft podcaster and Xbox spokesperson Larry "Major Nelson" Hryb's Gamercard has fallen victim to a hacker (or hackers) sometime this evening. A quick check on Xbox.com reveals the account is still being affected right now (though we have to imagine someone over in Redmond is hard at work on a fix) has been fixed. Hryb's account info was altered to reflect some ... rather offensive pejoratives, and images from Kotaku reveal an odd spam statement ("ANY ACCOUNT $100 PAYPAL!!!!!!!!"). A website by the name of "LiGHTzz" has a video that proclaims responsibility for the hacking and even offers up a YouTube video advertising his services to others -- the name Yasiel Rodriguez, a resident of Miami, Fl., is registered to the domain name in question. We've contacted Microsoft regarding the matter and will keep you updated on a response (discussed a bit by Xbox's Stephen Toulouse on Twitter, in the meantime). Proceed with caution after the break to see the NSFW image if you wish -- we'd suggest against it.
How Xbox Live tenure on your gamercard works
Wait, but we've been using Xbox Live since its inception! Shouldn't our gamercard have a little seven in the upper right corner? According to Microsoft's Major Nelson, not exactly. In fact, the first ever gamertag created ("e," for Xbox Live operations manager Eric Neustadter), won't officially turn seven until tomorrow. "Your Gold Veteran Status counts full years so if you've been a Gold member for 2 years, 11 months and 27 days; your status will display 2 years," says the Major.In fact, there's a whole handful of little caveats regarding the tiny gamercard number that have been all layed out in plain English over at his blog. Unfortunately for us, regardless of those caveats, we'll likely never be as cool in Nerdland as Eric Neustadter.[Via Xbox Gaming]
iXboxLive allows you to spot friends list on the go
If there's anything iPhone users love to do with their newest piece of technology is add applications that make the experience seem as familiar as possible. Enter iXboxLive, an application developed by first-timer Nicholas Pike that allows users to track friends, browse recent games, reputation and gamerscores.Before you click download keep in mind this application will run you 99 cents and free options currently exist. According to reviews on the iTunes Store, iXboxLive is more feature robust than some free programs but really ... do you need to see what your friend is playing while waiting in line at the movies?
TripleTags.com gamercards to include trophy support
One of the best thing about achievements and Gamerscore on the Xbox 360 is the ability to show it off to the world through the use of gamercards. These embeddable image files (example, above) allowed players to show off their recently played games, and their ever-growing Gamerscores. According to a recent post on TripleTags.com, the popular (but unofficial) source for PS3 gamercards will be getting support for trophies too. Hopefully, this will mean that players will no longer have to manually edit their gamercards with new games. Instead, a new API should allow the gamercard to update automatically with your recent trophy-enabled games and PlayStation level.(Also, wouldn't it be great if PS3 Fanboy profile pages could show this kind of info? Maybe if you leave enough comments, we can bother our programmers to do exactly that!)
Back compat games showing up on Gamercards
It seems that the Fall Update brought with it more than we realized. A befuddled Knuckles Dawson IMed us the other day, noting that backwards compatible Xbox games are now showing up on Xbox 360 Gamercards. We checked our own console, and sure enough, a recently played Xbox game (Ninja Gaiden) was displayed. The games do not appear on Xbox.com Gamercards, only on the 360 itself (under the Games Played tab in the Games blade). Also, only games you've played since the Fall Update will show up. In other words, our jaunt with the Halo 2 maps released earlier this year isn't recorded. The most curious bit of all is that the games are listed with the notice "0 of 0 Achievements."There are a few possibilities here. The most likely is that Microsoft thought it was a good idea for all games to show up on the list, especially given the arrival of the Xbox Originals service. Much less likely is that Microsoft is looking for some way to implement achievements in old Xbox games, which Major Nelson has stated isn't the case. No, we imagine it's there simply for convenience (or inconvenience, depending on whom you ask).
Gamercards making their way to PS3?
Games Digest is reporting a curious sighting they made at the Edinburgh Interactive Festival, a menu option entitled "Gamercard." While such an option isn't strange to 360 Fanboys like us, we should probably note that the option was seen during a presentation of Unreal Tournament III ... for the PS3. According to Games Digest, Epic's Mark Rein quickly covered up the option, saying, "Oops, you shouldn't have seen that." As further evidence that Sony may be adopting Microsoft's terminology, a forum goer on Evil Avatar posted the above image, apparently taken from the Home beta.We don't typically report on the happenings of the PS3 (as our name would suggest), but this is certainly relevant to followers of Microsoft's curvy white box. And no, we're not going to sling any mud Sony's way. Gamercards are a good idea, and one that would benefit PS3 owners. Considering Unreal Tournament III is heading to PS3 this holiday, PS3 fans may be getting a taste of Gamercards very soon.Read -- 'Gamercard' in UTIII demoRead -- gamer card image from EvAv forums[Via Joystiq. Thanks, Godfree]
PS3 'gamercard' option seen during demo
A menu selection spotted during a demo of Unreal Tournament 3 seems to suggest that Sony is working on a player-identification system, perhaps similar to Xbox Live's Gamertag. After seeing the "Gamercard" option in a menu at the Edinburgh Interactive Festival, Games Digest was reportedly told by Epic's Mark Rein "Oops, you shouldn't have seen that."What's more, a member of the Evil Avatar forums put forth an image from PlayStation Home that also has the "gamer card" option, this time with a space in the middle. We know very little at this point, but thought you all would appreciate a head-start on speculation. By the way, if the phrase "gamer card" seems familiar to you, you aren't imagining things.Read -- 'Gamercard' spotted in UT3 demoRead -- Gamercard image from Evil Avatar
"Gamercard" spotted at Edinburgh Interactive Festival
During the Unreal Tournament 3 screening at the Edinburgh Interactive Festival today (that's in Scotland, by the way) Games Digest noticed something strange in the game's menu. The option, "Gamercard", was quickly covered up by Mark Rein, who was giving the presentation. "Oops," he said, "you shouldn't have seen that."Due to the "no camera" rules there is no photographic evidence, but we're still happy to commence the speculation. Especially since Mark was so secretive about it. Is it a UT3 feature? Is it Sony's answer to the 360's Gamertag? We're not sure, but we'd definitely like to know. No doubt we'll hear more before the release of Unreal Tournament 3, at least. We'll try and contact Mark for a statement, but expect him to remain extremely tight lipped. What do you suspect it could be?
Xbox 360's first 100,000-point gamerscore
Uh ... congratulations? The man known as 'StripClubDj' has surpassed the 100,000-point gamerscore milestone, becoming the first Xbox 360 user to do so -- and he's suffered through some pretty awful games to get there (twice!).StripClubDj is currently trailed by Southsidepimp24 on the worldwide leaderboard. What a world...[Thanks, Mike]
More evidence Live Anywhere reaching Zune?
Digging through the source code of Zune.net a curious mole stumbled upon an intriguing line of code that referenced the production domain: "gamercard.zune.net."Perhaps it's just lazy (copy/paste) coding, as a Generation Zune commenter points out -- Xbox.com's source has the same line of code, with "xbox" instead of "zune" -- but why wouldn't Zune feature Gamercard compatibility? That Zune will be part of the Live Anywhere network has been rumored before, and there's no good reason to believe it won't.We already know (see 2old2play) that MS Passport-associated Gamertag's will become your Zunetag. In fact, Microsoft has already reserved said Gamertags so that if you ever decide to go Zune, you're proper handle will be waiting. We're not convinced that Live Anywhere is a critical selling point for Zune, but tossing the feature in for Xbox Livies is a no-brainer.[Via Gamertag Radio]
You got Gamercard in my Zune!
Gamertag Radio's resident code sleuth, Pinksage, found an interesting tidbit inside the Zune.net source code. It looks like links to various Zune related websites. They're all pretty normal except the last one on the list which reads, "gamercard.zune.net." -- check out a screen shot here. We had a pretty good idea that the Zune would play nice with our 360, but the idea of actual Gamercard integration never crossed our minds. Because we're also super sleuths (and because we love you) we stuck gamercard.zune.net into our favorite web browser. Unfortunately, it doesn't exist. At least, it doesn't exist yet. That won't stop us from speculating though (does anything?). Let's say you connect your Zune at your favorite WiFi cafe. You see that your buddy is playing Gears of War a week early. Naturally, you send him a Live message that you'll be right over, and off you go. We don't know how many of these features will actually be supported, but frankly, we're frightened. This kind of functionality could turn us into one of those annoying Blackberry people that are never disconnected. What do you think? If you're in the market for an multimedia player, would Gamercard/Live functionality convince you to pick up a Zune?
"Halo 6" now playing on Xbox.com
Reader Delerious brings this interesting phenomenom to our attention. Go to "My Xbox" tab on Xbox.com An interactive window with a bunch of gamerpics will show up. Click on any one of them, except for the middle one, to bring up a point-and-read tutorial of XBL basics. Notice that each one says "Playing Halo 6, Death Island, 2 minutes left." Is this somone's idea of Halo humor? Don't they know that the mere mention of the world Halo followed by a number could launch a thousand phony ilovebees knock-offs.
Customize your Gamercard [update 1]
Tired of your crappy old Gamercard? Then spruce it up with the Xbox Live Gamercard Generator! The XLGG operates on the same basic principles as MyGamerCard.net, but with some important differences. Unlike MyGamerCard, the XLGG lets you enhance your Gamercard with custom designs, like the one pictured above (rawr). The process is simple: enter your Gamertag -- and Live clan if you have one -- pick a design, and presto, you have a brand new Gamercard. The website outputs in GIF, JPG, and PNG formats. It also produces a URL, BB code, and HTML code for posting your card on blogs, forums, or even your own (Windows) desktop. Check it out and tell us what you think. [Via del.icio.us] Update 1: as you can read in the comments, MyGamerCard.net has grown quite a bit since I last used it. More options and user submitted themes actually put it ahead of XLGG in many respects. Not only that, it's also officially supported by Microsoft. Thanks for setting me straight, everyone.
Live stats widget for OS X
Here's an OS X widget that displays not only your gamercard, but stats like the last game played and total time. It seems like an improvement over the 360-related widget we pointed out last December, but I can't be sure on my dog-chewed PC. As always, we can't be held responsible if this stuff nukes your machine.[Thanks Nick M.]
Xbox 360 making cameo in Transformers movie?
Before we get to this, let's agree to hold off on all Xbox 360 power supply Energon cube jokes, just for a little while, kay? Alright, here goes. Gamespot points us to entertainment website The Movie Reporter, who claim to have gotten their popcorn-greased mitts on the script for Michael Bay's upcoming, slow-mo explosion fest remake of Transformers. So we know it's got explosions, we know it's got slow-mo, what else does it have? The Movie Reporter's Robert Sanchez writes, "I almost forgot to mention one of the most stupid scenes in the script ... For reasons that I won't get into, we see an iPod, Xbox 360, and plasma screens sprout legs and transform just a bit."Hmmm, well, yeah. Just a bit? Like the 360 transforms into a 360-with-legs? If there's a PS3 in this movie, we can expect a whole new metric for measuring the console wars, and just going on the two console's colors, we're guessing the 360 is an Autobot. Just sayin'! Commence Energon cube jokes ... now!See also:Transformers web site launchedActivision grabs Transformers movie license[Via Engadget]
GooMGC - Gamercards on Google
We got an email from Yves De Pryck, creator of the super cool GooMGC, which combines the gamercards from MyGamerCard.net with Google's homepage. The instructions are pretty straightforward: You will need to make a Google account if you don't already have one. Log in to Google Press "Add Content" (in the upper left-hand corner) Paste the URL for the desired version in the section labeled "Create a section." You can choose from four versions of GooMGC: 1 plus 2 shows your gamercard and 1 or 2 friends; 1 plus 5; 1 plus 6; and the super-big 1 plus 8. To top it off, he added links to his favorite 360 sites including the always popular Major Nelson and, yup, none other than Xbox 360 Fanboy! On behalf of the entire team, Adams, Ed, Jennie, and myself, it's much appreciated![Thanks, YLA G]
