5-year-old finds flaw in Xbox Live security while hacking into his dad's account



A 5-year-old San Diego boy has outwitted the sharpest minds at Microsoft — he's found a backdoor to the Xbox.

Kristoffer Von Hassel managed to log in to his father's Xbox Live account. When the password log-in screen appeared, Kristoffer simply hit the space button a few times and hit enter.

Robert Davies tells KGTV-TV that just after Christmas he noticed his son playing games he supposedly couldn't access.

Boy genius: At the tender age of 5, Kristoffer Von Hassel has already figured out how to hack into his dad's Xbox Live account

'I got so nervous,' Kristoffer told WPTV. 'I thought he was going to find out.'

Davies was far from upset.



'Just being five-years-old and being able to find a vulnerability and latch onto that. I thought that was pretty cool,' said the proud parent.



Shortly after, Kristoffer demonstrated the hack to his father on camera, showing him how that when he entered the wrong password for dad's account it took him to the password verification screen.

Once there, by typing space keys and then pressing enter, he was able to access the system.



Davies, who works in computer security, says he reported the issue to Microsoft, which fixed the bug and recently listed Kristoffer on its website as a 'security researcher.'

Kristoffer's response: 'I'm gonna be famous!'

Future hacker: Kristoffer has hacked his way into tech before, breaking into his dad's cell phone once already

A Microsoft spokesman didn't immediately return a call for comment.

It's not the Kristoffer's first triumph. At a year old, he bypassed a cellphone toddler lock by holding down the 'home' button.

'He's figured out vulnerabilities three or four times,' Davies said.



Microsoft released a statement saying: ' 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. '