A 5-year-old boy in California hacked into his family's Xbox One Live account to access games he wasn't allowed to play, exploiting a security hole in the software.
When Kristoffer Von Hassel's parents noticed the 5-year-old playing a game he was locked out of, they found out he had discovered a simple vulnerability in Xbox Live, Yahoo Tech reported via ABC 10.
His dad, Robert Davies, actually thought it was "awesome" that Kristoffer had managed to get into a parent's Live account by putting a bunch of spaces into a password verification prompt.
"Just being 5 years old and being able to find a vulnerability and latch onto that. I thought that was pretty cool," Davis told ABC 10.
Kristoffer had demonstrated similar savvy before when as a 1-year-old, he held down the home key on a smartphone to infiltrate the lock screen.
After he and his parents reported the security hole to Microsoft, Kristoffer "thought someone was going to steal the Xbox," he told ABC 10.
But the tech company rewarded the young hacker with four games, $50 and a year's subscription to Xbox Live. Kristoffer would like to be a gamer when he grows up, while his dad hopes the boy will choose something in computer security, ABC 10 reported.
Microsoft said in a statement, "We're always listening to our customers and thank them for bringing issues to our attention. We take security seriously at Xbox and fixed the issue as soon as we learned about it."
The company also added Kristoffer to an online list of security researchers that have helped Microsoft keep its software secure.
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