Microsoft have announced that they've upgraded their security systems in regards to Xbox Live. This allows users to set a secret code which will need to input while making purchases (a sure-fire way to stop the sludge of stupid parents allowing their children access to credit cards), as well as an increase in the ways of notifying users with compromised accounts. They have suggested that everybody change their passwords.
The company is also looking to take legal action against anybody trading in Live accounts and are attempting to have any publically posted username/password sets removed from the internet. Despite all this, general manager Alex Garden has said that a lot of these security issues can be avoided by users correctly managing their account, keeping things up to date and choosing difficult to guess passwords. He later said that many publically released passwords are either "1234" or the word password itself.