A five-year-old boy uncovered a security flaw in Microsoft's Xbox One gaming device, highlighting that even the youngest out there can find a way through the security systems of the largest companies. But it has led to Microsoft fixing the glitch and praising the young boy's talents.
It is surprising that the fault was not unearthed earlier, as the San Diego boy was easily able to access his father's account by going from the incorrect password screen to the verification screen, where the young boy hit the space bar a few times and then pressed enter. This led him into his father's account, where his parents didn't want him.
His father, Robert Davies, praised Kristoffer Von Hassel, saying that his five-year-old had no help in accessing his own personal account.
Ironically, the father is a security engineer at the San Diego office of ServiceNow, an IT cloud services company.
Davies, upon learning of his son's access, immediately told Microsoft, which commended the young boy and fixed the glitch in the system.
The young boy is now among those listed by Microsoft in its March list of security researchers who have disclosed security flaws in their products. He's the youngest on the list.
"We're always listening to our customers and thank them for bringing issues to our attention," Microsoft was quoted as saying by numerous reports from a press statement on the issue, which has received nationwide news attention.
Microsoft has given the family $50, four Xbox One games and a year of Xbox Live Gold membership for the young boy's efforts in discovering the security flaw. It is unclear if any other families have experienced similar incidents, as Microsoft did not disclose any further information besides thanking the boy and fixing the issue at hand.
"We take security seriously at Xbox and fixed the issue as soon as we learned about it," Microsoft said in a statement to ABC 10, which first reported the security flaw and how it was uncovered.
