Five-Year-Old Boy Discovers Microsoft Xbox One Security Flaw

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Microsoft displays the Xbox One at Gamescom 2013 in Cologne, Germany.

Image: Flickr, Marco Verch

By Alex Magdaleno2014-04-07 00:58:27 UTC

Microsoft has a new security researcher and he's a five-year-old boy from San Diego, Calif.

Kristoffer Von Hassel discovered a security flaw with Microsoft's Xbox One that allowed him to log into his father's account.

See also: SmartGlass Is Now a Universal Remote for Xbox One

Kristoffer's father, Richard Davies, started noticing that Kristoffer was logging into his Xbox Live account and playing video games that were off-limits. When prompted to enter a password, Kristoffer would enter a series of spaces and hit enter, gaining access to his father's account.

"I was like yea!" Kristoffer told KGTV-10, a CNN affiliate, after breaking into his dad's account.

Glee quickly turned into panic as the thought of his father finding out what he did dawned upon Kristoffer. Instead, Davies was interested, as he himself works in online security.

"How awesome is that?" Davies said. "Just being five years old and being able to find a vulnerability and latch on to that. I thought that was pretty cool."

After Kristoffer showed his father what he did, Davies reported the issue to Microsoft.

"We're always listening to our customers and thank them for bringing issues to our attention," Microsoft said in a statement to KGTV-10. "We take security seriously at Xbox and fixed the issue as soon as we learned about it."

According to KGTV-10, Microsoft will give Kristoffer four games, a $50 gift card and a year-long subscription of Xbox Live.

You can watch his interview with a KGTV-10 below:

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Topics: Entertainment, Gaming, Microsoft, password, security, xbox 360, xbox one