Xbox LIVE accounts hacked in the name of FIFA-love

By Brian P Rubin | 14 October 2011 | 140 Comments

UPDATE:

Due to the overwhelming response to this story, we contacted Microsoft for a response to the issues. Check here for the follow-up.

Original Story:

While we’ve yet to hear anything in the way of official numbers, today Eurogamer reports that there are growing cases of Xbox LIVE accounts being hacked in order to…buy FIFA stuff.

These hackers are big sports fans. Probably soccer hooligans.

The Eurogamer post references one of their readers, Speedjack, who told the website that the other day he’d discovered his gamertag was now “recovered” on someone else’s console.

“I then find out that I’ve had 5000 then 500 MS points bought on my credit card. Better yet, all the points including the 120 I had already on my account are gone… all spent on FIFA 12 content packs yesterday afternoon while I was at work,” he’s quoted as saying. “Not only that, but my account now has 35 FIFA 12 achievement points on it!!! Never played the game in my life – hate football.”

The post says that Microsoft support suggested that the issue exists with Electronic Arts’ servers, leaving accounts vulnerable—though this is all speculative. The post also links to several other reports of similar hacks—again, which all seem to have the common thread of being used for FIFA 12 content. Which is insane.

This is far from the huge scale of similar security breaches that we’ve seen on the PlayStation Network—even the relatively small 93,000 accounts that suffered attempted breaches earlier this week—but it goes to show that, if true, XBL is vulnerable too.

No one is safe. Not with these soccer-loving hackers out on the loose. Anyone out there had their XBL accounts FIFA-hacked?

Via Eurogamer

140 Comments

Posted by Anthony HatesYou on 19 December 11 at 5:36am

BALLS.
Posted by xbox pro on 24 December 11 at 9:20am

I have the cords for an xbox arcade but I have an xbox pro. I tried to fit the energy box into it but it didn’t work. It seems like it doesn’t fit and i just wanted to know is it possible?
Posted by shane on 01 January 12 at 10:07am

Yes, happened to me yesterday, 2400 or so points gone, lucky credit card was expired. all used on Fifa 12 Premium gold packs and 1 standard gold pack leaving me 20 points.

Xbox forum blames EA and guess what EA blame Microsoft, its unlikey to do anything but have e-mailed the Sun newspaper and BBC Watchdog, its about time the general public saw this as its being kept alarmingly quite. to add a final blow my Gamertag is now getting locked down and suspended while they look into it…zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz!!!
Posted by Nathan on 03 January 12 at 4:18am

Happened to me just recently. Emailing microsoft is doing nothing about changing my password and I have Fifa 12 on my games with 2 achievements and lost all my ms points just as said above. The only time I have done anything involving ea is when BF3 forced me to…
Posted by cody on 04 January 12 at 12:04pm

Was hacked this morning they tried to buy 6000 points but luckily card was expired
I think I got hacked from being on the EA servers for playing bf3.
Posted by Rob H on 06 January 12 at 12:39am

It’s happened to me AGAIN. Last month I contacted them because I’d lost a couple of thousand points and someone had managed to but about £15 more from my credit card. They locked my account for 3 weeks to “investigate” then on Tuesday told me I’d get the points back (I haven’t yet) and be refunded my money (also not happened yet) and I would have to reset my password to access my account.

So, I reset my password at 5pm on Wednesday. I used a random selection of numbers and letters. At 11pm my credit card was charged 4 times, totally about £35, and all the points bought were used to buy Fifa 12 gold packs.

I (still) do not own any Fifa games. I do not, in fact, even own an Xbox at the moment. Very, very angry.
Posted by Rob H on 06 January 12 at 12:41am

Oh, and because of their ridiculous credit card policies (you can’t delete your credit card details without first entering another one) I’ve had to CANCEL my credit card, which screws up a lot of other automated payments I make.
Posted by Darren on 10 January 12 at 4:05am

Well, my account investigation was complete on the 22 Nov. I was due a refund of £42.50 for the credits purchased. Was only supposed to take a maximum of 10 days, plus a further 30 for it to show on the statement.

46 days later i call to complain about my refund not showing up.

The stupid idiot put the case through again as an investigation and now my account has been locked and nothing MS can do.

You cant talk to the investigation team, the agent cant speak to the investigation team, you can’t speak to accounts to get your refund! It’s a complete joke!

Now my legal team with the credit card company are dealing with the case!
Posted by Ben on 12 January 12 at 6:09am

Happened to me yesterday. This is STILL GOING ON? I am surprised and disappointed in the complete lack of care Microsoft or EA has shown with this issue.

For paying a ridiculous $60 a year for service, you would imagine there would be more of an effort to rectify these sorts of issues.

I would be interested in a class action suit. I’ve lost $50 and I don’t know if I will ever get it back. We’ve got to end FIFAGate 2012.
Posted by Colin on 12 January 12 at 8:51am

This just happened to me as well. January 11th.
NOBODY knows any of my passwords.

This has been going on over two months. This is either Microsoft or EA. FIX YOUR SHIT.
Posted by Dave on 12 January 12 at 7:39pm

Just happened to me last night and lost 20 bucks worth of points.
Posted by berry on 13 January 12 at 2:31pm

heapend to me too yesterday, i was like wtf account on other console, and all of the sudden i lost my points, got 2 achievements for fifa 12 (i hate soccer games). looked for more info on how that could happen and well i see its a real problem. and it has to be fixed
Posted by Drift on 13 January 12 at 8:01pm

Well just happened to me today and does anyone know by the time they eventually finish the investigation that these little soccer shits reattempted to go after their account ? just want to make sure this won’t be coming up again
Posted by Kioleesh on 13 January 12 at 8:31pm

If theres any way you can help with this issue i would be greatly appreciative. I was hacked just yesterday and these douchebags used my account to purchase a premium gold players pack for stupid fifa 12. Please reply to me if you can help.
Posted by jlm123hi on 14 January 12 at 5:49pm

fuck microsoft. my account was just hacked too. just yesterday. $30 all gone. thank god there was no credit card hooked up to it. i would recommend everyone make a stronger password in case they are using a brute force attack. a cheap GPU can render 6 letter passwords useless these days.
Posted by Dalton on 14 January 12 at 7:53pm

Just lost $40 on my account and my brother’s account had another 40 bucks BOTH of our accounts hacked, called microsoft (had to wake up nice and early due to their shitty office hours on hawaiian time =/) and practically the bitch just told us fuck off, suspended our accounts and REFUSED us a refund of our points. I wanna look into suing EA or microsoft whichever asswipe doesn’t know what the fuck they’re doing.
Posted by Melvin on 20 January 12 at 1:34am

Hey I was hacked I was on bf3, Jan 15, 2012 here in Chicago, stayed off of Xbox live about 2 days, i signed in and it said ” this account has been logged in already on another system. It kicked me off 3 times. I finally noticed my windows id was changed to “gimmiemsp@hotmail.co.uk” I called them up they suspended my account and within 2 days I was back online, they had given me 2months of gold membership. They spent 249. bucks worth of ms points and gold packages. Yes fifa12 was the last thing they played and even earned achievements!
Posted by tehKillaChris on 21 January 12 at 5:47am

Had this happen to me just a couple of days ago, 19/1/12, just changed my passwords and sent Microsoft an email about it, if I don’t get a reply by Monday I’ll try phoning them, fortunately they only spent the 2100 MS points I had on there and didn’t use the card for anything (I’ve transferred all cash from that account to another one anyway just in case).
Posted by Dorge on 21 January 12 at 4:02pm

Account just got hacked. MS points gone and about 120 bucks spent from credit card & 3 Fifa achievements gained. Seems like they took total control of my account after i changed the password, the verification email was sent to an extra email hotmail address that i’ve never seen before. After that they could change the password and my sign in email. Was so quick it seemed automated.
Posted by doomed on 25 January 12 at 10:06pm

this is what you get when your password is abcd1234.
Not hard to get a program that just tries random combinations of words and numbers until it gets a hit,

My suggestion use a really hard messed up pass, make it something like “#$-@*$AF23″

This is just like peoples Windows Live messenger sending out virus links to friends until you change your password and why I stopped using messenger.

If people got more clued up on internet security this sort of shit wouldn’t happen.
Posted by Evan on 05 February 12 at 2:46pm

Just happened to me, Feb 3, 2012. Called MS right away when I got the emails AT WORK confirming my “6000 Points purchased” and “4000 Points purchased”. They locked my account and said that they would investigate but quoted me at 3-5 business days. I better get my money back or I’m ditching online gaming altogether and going off the grid.
Posted by Scott on 03 March 12 at 9:03pm

I think all of you got lucky. I just got hacked for Fifa. They got me 3 achievements, but spent $124.96 all on these Jumbo Gold packs. I’ve only played Battlefield, never Fifa, whatever the hell is going on, Xbox and EA has lost my support.
Posted by Glenn on 04 March 12 at 8:49pm

My account got done thismorning at 4am local time I have lost over $189 of them buy Fu%ing points called M$ they were nice enough to tell me that they would investigate. Same as others have never played fifa just Battlefeild 2 months ago. EA will not get my support for a while because of this
Posted by chris on 24 April 12 at 10:34pm

Yeah, just got hacked in january and in april luckily for me i saw it happen and took the necessary precautions while he was doing it. signed his ass out, and then changed passwords. called microsoft and they got done with the investigation relatively quickly..like 18 hours.