back to article Xbox Live patrols hit by ugly SWAT attacks

Hackers trying to cheat the Xbox Live game network have stooped to a new low: sending hoax emergency distress calls to police with the goal of drawing an armed response to the homes of Microsoft employees. According to The Sammamish Patch news service, Eric Neustadter, operations manager for Xbox Live, was the latest Xbox …

COMMENTS

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  1. M Gale

    Not often I suggest throwing the book at someone.

    If these guys are caught though, that should be the least that happens to them. This goes way beyond a prank. This goes way beyond making someone's server fall over. It only takes one of the SWAT guys to make a mistake, and you've got someone killed for the heinous crime of banning your bloody Xbox Live account. Well boo hoo. Seriously, just fuck off. Go cry and wank in the corner until you can figure out why you got banned in the first place. If you can't figure that out, and if you think calling armed police to someone's house is valid retaliation for anything, then I sincerely hope you are caught, sectioned and spend the rest of your days getting your head shrunk by day while sleeping in a padded cell by night for even thinking that getting someone's guts blown out is funny.

    Thus ends the diatribe.

    1. Arctic fox
      Thumb Up

      @M Gale "Not often I suggest throwing the book at someone"

      I have to say that it sounds like teenage kids to me rather than "adults". The mentality behind that kind of spoof, the importance of the game to them - and the cheating followed by getting indignant at those who have caught you at it. This probably precludes your excellent suggestion at the end of your piece. Where they *are* adults I wish that I really was in a position to suggest the scorpion pits!

      1. Mark 65

        @Arctic Fox

        Never underestimate the ability of adults to behave like teenagers.

        1. Arctic fox
          Happy

          @Mark 65 RE: "Never underestimate the ability of adults to behave like teenagers"

          I am very much afraid that you have a point there!

  2. mt1

    Surely the bigger concern should be how did they know where he lived

    1. M Gale

      pipl.com

      You should try it some time. Scary site, that is. A few dollars and you can get just about anybody's address. That and Google gives the guy's full address if you poke it with the right search string and are quick enough before it disappears from the cache.

      Finding people is not too hard these days, unless they take extreme precautions to hide.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Skids gonna skid.

    1. phuzz Silver badge
      Trollface

      "What's that skiddy? You want to swat me? Well my IP is 127.0.0.1, bring it on".

      Bound to work on some of them.

  4. Just Thinking

    In the UK

    They would send a couple of PCSOs around. Tomorrow.

    1. Alien Doctor 1.1
      Big Brother

      "In the UK

      They would send a couple of PCSOs around. Tomorrow."

      After bacon butties and several cups of tea, they'd then have to walk from the nearest police station - nowadays many miles away - knock politely on your door and say "excuse me, sir, but are you being naughty online with some yankee characters? Oh, OK, just don't do it again will you old chap; there's a good boy."

      1. Danny 14
        Thumb Up

        aye

        and a "Are you questioning me with relation to any crime? Caution? No? Bye then". To which you can get back to buring your murdered wife whilst they get a positive crime investigation report.

  5. James Woods

    Stooped to a new low? You mean like el reg trying to involve itself in politics; something it clearly isn't smart enough to do.

    Spoofing is the fault our telephone system and nothing more. It exists because it enables telemarketers and bill collectors to harass people.

    They payoff telco; thus the loopholes remain.

    No reason in 2011 that spoofing couldn't be stopped with verification methods built into the system.

    It's intentionally left this way for $.

    1. Dave Bell

      I'm certainly getting sick and tired by the ease with which intrusive advertising phone calls can arrive here with no way of identifying where they came from.

      "The Caller Withheld Their Number"

      Gmail, I can tag an email as spam, and if enough people do that, it gets automatically tagged as from a spam source.

      I'm not sure I want that for phone calls, but I'd like to be able to tell the telco that a caller has been abusing their system. They're ignoring so many of the protections we can have. They're outside OfCom rules. Why can't I press a number on my phone and tell the telco that I don't want further calls from this anonymous source?

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    This is a lot more serious than a ddos attack, and seeing as that results in a serious investigation and response (far too much in my opinion), I hope this is treated the same way.

  7. kain preacher

    New law

    I'm not for running off and creating laws for every single problem, but do belie that a law is need for this . In some states you can get as little as 5 years for this. I say make it a federal and state crime. Some things in life should follow you for life .

    1. TimeMaster T

      Following

      "Some things in life should follow you for life ."

      a criminal record does.

      1. kain preacher

        If you do less than five years in prison , in the US you can get it expunged.

        1. Paul Landon
          Thumb Down

          You can get it expunged?

          What from the internet? From archive or wayback of the local papers?

          1. kain preacher

            Your assuming that it will be on the Internet. Unless it's reported in a major news paper it wont . AS far as a local news paper , well you are lucky to get 5 lines of real news in the US. None of the major news paper in my area have reporting section for arrests. Oh in the US a standard background check is done by searching court records. No rumors allowed. an Arrest may or may not show up on a standard criminal back ground check .

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Hmmm

    It seems more complicated than hacking into MS software which it seems even a child can do...

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Sue them (the telcos, that is)

    So, sue the telcos for maintaining an attractive nuisance (namely, a system that makes spoofing the Caller ID information trivial). See if you can get the police to bill the telco for a false report.

    Hit them in the ass pocket and they will fix the system.

    But until there is a cost to NOT fixing the system, the cost of fixing the system, no matter how small, will be justification enough for the telcos to do nothing.

  10. kain preacher

    @David D. Hagood

    But the cost is not small.

    1. Naughtyhorse

      so make the fine mahoosive

  11. Alan Brown Silver badge
    Devil

    @Dave Bell

    You can - but you pay extra for the privilege of accessing features which are built into the exchange equipment from the outset.

    Just their way of nickle&diming you.

  12. Glen Turner 666

    Caller ID, ANI and SMS

    David, emergency services don't see the Caller ID, they see the Directory Number (aka Automatic Number Identification). That's how your intelligent phone services get billed even if you suppress Caller ID. When the user disables Caller ID they don't suppress ANI.

    There are two actual issues.

    1) Presentation of location data to emergency services. This commonly arrives with voice calls, but not yet with SMS. That doesn't give the opportunity for the operator to say "you say you are in a house in Seattle, so why is your phone in Godforsaken, PA"

    2) The widespread availability of handsets lacking correct purchaser address details, particularly prepaid cellphones. People buy a prepaid, give no or fake details to the salesdroid, and ditch the phone in the river afterwards. For voice calls, people are typically tracked down using CCTV of the sale with comparisons with the recorded fake called being the main, but circumstantial, evidence. SMS doesn't leave that amount of evidence.

    It's clear that SMS has been deployed to emergency services without sufficient engineering. And yes, the telcos are directly and indirectly responsible for that. It isn't a profit area so the network services to support emergency services' SMS aren't on the telco's list of features and so aren't provided by their equipment manufacturers.

  13. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Give the punks a wake up call

    Throw them in the slammer and see how they like a bit of reality.

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