Last Friday I ran with a story that researchers at Drexel University had managed to retrieve previous owner's credit card information from a refurbished Xbox 360. Ashley Podhradsky said that her team had managed to get all the information needed to take somebody's identity using tools readily available on the internet.
For obvious reasons, even the hint of such a thing being possible will not be good for Microsoft and they contacted us earlier today to refute the claim.
“We are conducting a thorough investigation into the researchers’ claims. We have requested information that will allow us to investigate the console in question and have still not received the information needed to replicate the researchers’ claims.
“Xbox is not designed to store credit card data locally on the console, and as such seems unlikely credit card data was recovered by the method described. Additionally, when Microsoft refurbishes used consoles we have processes in place to wipe the local hard drives of any other user data. We can assure Xbox owners we take the privacy and security of their personal data very seriously.”
– Jim Alkove, General Manager, Security, Interactive Entertainment Business at Microsoft
We've reached out to Ashley Podhradsky for comment.
