5-year-old outsmarts Microsoft, discovers Xbox security flaw

LOS ANGELES: A 5-year-old boy in the US has outwitted the sharpest minds at Microsoft by discovering a security flaw in the Xbox gaming system.

Kristoffer Von Hassel of San Diego has discovered a back door in to Xbox live, making the smartest guys at Microsoft pay attention.

The computer-savvy tot first tried to access his father's Xbox Live account but when the password log-in screen appeared, Kristoffer simply hit the space button a few times and hit enter.

That is all it took to bypass built-in security. Just after Christmas, Kristoffer's parents noticed he was logging into his father's Xbox Live account and playing games he was not supposed to be.

"I got nervous. I thought he was going to find out," Kristoffer was quoted as saying by local news station KGTV.

His father Robert Davies asked Kristoffer how he was doing it.

Kristoffer showed his father that when he typed in a wrong password for his father's account, it clicked to a password verification screen.

By typing in space keys, then hitting enter, Kristoffer was able to get in through a back door.

Microsoft has come up with a fix and acknowledged Kristopher on their website in a list of security researchers that have helped make Microsoft online services more secure.

Microsoft, in a statement, said, "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."

Kristoffer will receive four games, $50 and a year-long subscription to Xbox Live from Microsoft.

Even at such a young age, this was not Kristoffer's first security hack.

When he was just a year old, his father says he bypassed a cellphone toddler lock by holding down the "home" button.