Skyllus's grief for having his Xbox LIVE account hacked has only been worsened by Microsoft denial of the whole matter.
Microsoft's official stance is that Xbox LIVE is "un-hackable" and that any hijacked accounts are a result of social engineering where the "hacker" tricks the account owner into divulging too much personal information. But this is not the case with Skyllus who had his account hijacked three times although he changed its password every time he got it back.
The first two times Skyllus's account was hijacked he called Xbox LIVE support, gave them his personal details as stored in his Xbox LIVE id and had his password reset. But on the third time, the hacker changed those details, leaving the real account owner with no proof of ownership. The only personal info the hacker didn't change was skyllus's credit card numbers, which Xbox LIVE support refused to consider it as an adequate proof. They allowed him to remove those credit card numbers, though.
In skyllus's own words:
"Well, I finally got off the phone with Luke from Technical Support and......
Their systems are currently down (said Xbox Live was out as well), and I was instructed to call back in 4 to 6 hours. I was not able to remove the card from my account either due to their systems being down.
Also, he tried to transfer me back to Billing again. I was able to get him to set me up to be able to talk to a supervisor once the service is back up though. But all in all this was the path which they sent me in:
Billing -> Technical Support -> Billing -> Technical Support -> Billing -> Technical Support
Each person along the line listened to the case, took what little information I could give them, and then said "Let me check my resources" then came back to transfer me to the other department. I asked to speak with a supervisor at each set of the chain, insisting multiple times. Final guy tried to transfer me once again to Billing and I told him how ridiculous that was, and that I demanded to speak with a supervisor. He came back with the news that their network is down."
We've snooped around a bit and it seems that Xbox LIVE account hijacking is not as uncommon as Microsoft wants you to believe. According to our sources, it is too easy to call Xbox LIVE support, claiming that you are the account owner and fool them into revealing some of the account information. After several calls, you'll end up with enough information to claim the account as your own and ask them to change the password for you.
Several sources also claimed that some hackers have found several security holes in Xbox LIVE which they use to hijack accounts without resorting to the aforementioned social engineering tricks.
