Microsoft have confirmed that several senior current and former employees have had their Xbox Live accounts targeted by hackers.

These hackers apparently discovered the employee’s social security numbers and then used these alongside some social engineering information to gain access to the accounts before selling the information on, in true hacker style.

“We are aware that  group of attackers are usnig several stringed social engineering techniques to compromise the accounts of a handful of high-profile Xbox Live accounts held by current and former Microsoft employees”, Microsoft stated. “We are activly working with law enforcement and other affected companies to disable this current method of attack and prevent its further use.”

So far only high-profile employee accounts have been targeted, and Microsoft are working double time to stop the attackers , so there’s no need to start panicking. Also Microsoft itself wasn’t hacked, it was a company that held the social security information that was used to pass a loophole, so there’s no need to go cancelling your XBL accounts either! 

We’ll keep you updated if anything else comes to light with the matter.