Hackers targeting Microsoft as huge disruption hits Xbox Live?

AATG writes: "Microsoft's award-winning Xbox Live service has been consistently reliable since its launch way back in 2002. But unusually, today it seems to be suffering from a huge disruption in service as gamers the world over are reporting issues playing multiplayer games of Call of Duty, the Battlefield 3 Beta, Gears of War 3, FIFA 12 and many more.

Joypad lock ups, system crashes, greyed out menu options and a complete inability to play anything online are all symptoms I've personally experienced across a wide range of games since earlier today.

To confuse matters further, however, Xbox Live Parties seem to work OK and communications are in full working order.

With no official statement from Microsoft explaining this outage, we can't help but wonder whether something untoward is going on, particularly after the recent PSN outages."

[Misterhbk]

Interesting, I don't have live so idk what to say about this. Is anyone here having issues?

Hopefully it's nothing big because I'm really getting sick of all the hacker crap.

[limewax]

I'm on live, struggling like mad to get a game right now on gears, I thought it was my internet but PS3 and PC BF3 betas are working. Then I just figured the gears servers were having issues, Guess I was wrong.

Hope this is sorted soon

[caperjim]

Ive always had trouble finding matches with Gears online. It takes too long to find a match and there is no join in progress to even out the teams when people quit. Thats one of the reasons i passed on gears 3.

[limewax]

Well you can now actually join in progress, But the reason for the slow speeds in general is they actually don't have enough servers and you often end up in a P2P game anyway

[candystop]

"Thats one of the reasons i passed on gears 3."

He passed on Gears 3 so in other words he has never played it online and was referring to part 2. His opinion is obviously not educated.

OT: This guy is trying to hard for hits or something. I've been on live all morning without a hiccup. Even if others are having problems it's not official whats happening yet. Party chat ftw

Edit: I Love how people on this site disagree (20 wow)with those who see through the BS!

"I just got offline saw this headline, and thought wtf?"

I feel you jokesonyou and have been saying the same thing all day!

[gamingdroid]

When I play Gears 3 it is the fastest matchmaking I have ever experienced.

Maybe it is your region or your internet connection.

@candystop

When I was in MI for a while, I found my internet would start to act up, like loose a few packets every now and then. With normal use or even video streaming, you wouldn't notice it at all. On Xbox Live it manifested itself as disconnects. Turns out it was my router!

I discovered it by repeatedly pinging google. I thought it was comcast....

[vickers500]

"When I play Gears 3 it is the fastest matchmaking I have ever experienced."

Same for me as well. Sometimes I accidentally hit A on a mode I didn't intend to join, and within like 15-20 seconds I'm already in the match.

[Legion]

@caperjim "I dont play on console anymore. I have a beast PC and love playing 1st person shooters online." - Quote caperjim

Looking at your past comments here in other posts it seems like you don't even play on console anymore anyways. Just keep moving... and stop trolling.

[Lazy_Sunday]

It's UK server issues, nothing more.

[AngryTypingGuy]

If the status of this story is still "hard to tell" and based on speculation, then maybe, just maybe the title of this story should be changed because this is how rumors start.

[limewax]

Thanks lazy sunday, I think you may be right, I am UK.

Also for anyone still interested, I found the gears matchmaking was much faster for versus. Horde and co-op are the ones running a little slow for me

[caperjim]

@Legion
Just because i dont game on console as much anymore dont mean i wouldnt pick up a few decent exclusives.

Im not sure which is more disturbing....you having time to look through my past comments or you actually wanting to.

[Paradicia]

No, I've yet to experience any issues. The article is scaremongering and desperately looking for hits.

[miDnIghtEr20C_SfF]

Exactly. How does this even get passed as news? This dude has no links to any information.. Just his own personal experience from his crappy ass internet connection.

[thereapersson]

"How does this even get passed as news? "

The same thing can be said about 90 percent of the articles that get posted on this website. It's all about flaming and hits; there is no real "journalism" about them.

[PR0X1]

But I have DSL 386kbps and I get lag all the time!!!1122!!

Better blame it on Microsoft and xbox live.

If you just got fiber internet like me than you would not experience any of that.

[aviator189]

I played Gears earlier in the morning and I'm playing Reach right now without any issues. Live is running as usual for me.

[Mutant-Spud]

I'm in Australia so at about 11PM saturday night I started having problems, I was Playing Test Drive Unlimited 2 and the races weren't loading.
I got sick of waiting and re booting, assumed it was an issue on their side and decided to play Gears 3 for a while. Same deal, it stalled at the front screen with the prompt for friends party formation rolling.
I went and had shower then decided to have one more go at Gears 3 before bed and after a pretty long search and load time I got into a KOTH match with all bots.
I played two full matches like that until some other players joined, so by 12:30 AM it was back to normal.

[Why o why]

ef hackers....time to unite dudes....ef hackers

[Gray-Fox-Type0]

xbox live working fine what is this article?

[GearsOfWar]

I'm not sure what the problem is, as I'm being played by a lot of people with no problems as we speak.

[DarkBlood]

stop letting girls play you for a fool man :P lol

[ArabianKnight01]

How does bs like this get approve!? Are we fact checking b4 approving N4G?

[JokesOnYou]

After watching football this morning I've been playing Gears3 all day, other than about1hr checking out the BF3 *beta, which btw is really boring, bad jaggies, weapons lack feel of impact and its a glitchfest, wow and hardcore BF3 fans had the nerve to hate on COD. Well anyway on topic I think this guy must have some issues with his service provider considering I havent seen any complaints in xbox forums.

[TasteyZombieFood]

"its a glitchfest,"
It's a beta is what I think you meant to say. :)

[JokesOnYou]

nah, I meant exactly what I said its definitely a glitchfest, don't quit your dead job 'cause you're a terrible mind reader. Fact is the game is due out in 3weeks, if Dice were serious about doing a proper *beta test, we would of seen this *beta 2 or 3 months ago....no doubt we'll see more damage control tweets.

[DarthJay]

DICE had to get the build approved weeks before they put XBox/Playstation put up the beta. It is called a beta and not a demo. You go in knowing, 100% that it is not the finished product and there are absolutely going to be issues. If you went in thinking anything else, that's your fault. If anyone is to blame here, it is the approval process from XBLA and PSN. If they were able to show up last Monday with where they were at and able to say "hey, let's put this up," it would have been a lot different. They couldn't, and the process started weeks ago, if not months.

You should actually know what you are talking about before you try to insult people. Your SN is very apropos.

[Legion]

I haven't had any issues. Anyone actually having any? Let me rephrase that... anyone that uses Xbox Live and isn't just bullcrap trollers.

By the way what is he meaning when he says "Joypad lock ups", what exactly is a joypad? Really? Does he mean controller? Is that a UK thing? And tell me why any issue with Live would lock your joyfull pad up? And he mentioned the world over is reporting the issue. So have we gotten the skinny from all the other web sites yet on this? And his first thoughts is that it has to be hackers? Who is this guy? Seems like in his last ten threads he started this was on there... "Anyone available in London tomorrow to go play some Nintendo games?" guess that says a lot. ha

[SkylineR]

What issues? I just played Gears 3 for about 3 hours....

[gogospeedracer]

When did Live go down? No problems on the East Coast.

[Virus201]

There is nothing wrong with Xbox live. I was playing Gears 3 then downloaded NBA 2k12 and there wasn't a single problem.

[geddesmond]

But but live is so secure and it was all Sonys fault for hackers taking down their PSN. We pay for Xbox live so that stuff doesn't happen to us Lol.

Come on what do yous expect? After all the heat Sony got from Xbots over the PSN outage its only natural for PS3 guys to bite back. Infact even today you have Pro Xbox guys with Annoymous masks as avatars on forums and crap.

Can't we all agree that nothing is safe and hackers are pieces of Dog S**t.

[DarthJay]

Why? Because someone made up a BS article that wasn't true? Grow up. There was never a problem with Live yesterday. At all.

[Ddouble]

Sounds more like internal issues rather than hackers.

[tiffac008]

lol! at the article it was posted twice. XD

[tiffac008]

lol! I'm getting disagrees because people didn't saw that the article was originally posted twice. Why don't you guys click the "Read Full Story" and check the first comment of the article.

Aww you know what nvm... some of you guys are taking this rumor (aka no hard evidence, aka no proper investigation before speculation) too seriously. I swear its much easier to laugh at this kind of articles, at least you'll walk away with a smile.

[DarkBlood]

your doing what they want which is "complaining about it"

[tarbis]

darkblood:
you're doing what they call "not reading at all"

[GamersRulz]

I hope it's not true, I don't have xbox but I don't want N4G to be filled with outage and doom news

[Lirky]

I agree with you i dont own a xbox360 either but dislike when a gaming site gets flooded with the same reports of outtage of a systems internal problems.

[radphil]

It's a little late for that. :c

[krazykombatant]

Like when n4g was flooded with psn problems for like 2 months... yeah i totally get you.

[cstyle]

Xbox live is still reliable. This is just some site trying to get hits.

[RedHotChiliPepaSpray]

Looking for hits? It's trying to report a gaming related problem that could affect millions of people. Some have already had issues today, so no, this article is not looking for hits, this is the site doing what its job

[kaveti6616]

Every single day, some gamers are going to have issues with connecting to XBL.

That doesn't mean a damn thing.

[humbleopinion]

Let's assume there was a gaming related problem. This brings up two questions:
1) How did the article writer conclude that it was a wide problem with the Xbox service and not with his connection/provider etc? No information was given on that
2) How the hell did he conclude that this issue happened because hackers are targeting MS and not because of some infastructure issue or some service upgrade or whatever? Again no answer.

[Legion]

It's not even an article. It is a site that allows anyone to post an article blog style. This guy isn't even a journalist. Just a guy that had some issues and chose to post some rant about hackers and/or alien invasions. He creates his own news and then posts it on N4G as gaming news. Someone should shut him down and those that keep approving this crap.

[DiRtY]

working fine for me.

[Sayai jin]

You got a disagree because it is working for you. I am not having any problems either. Gears of War 3!!!

[SkylineR]

Of course you get disagrees. It's N4G. If you say that water is also known as "h2o", you'll get disagrees. :p

But yeah, I played Gears 3 for about 3 hours with no problems.

[wnek9]

have been playing fine all week even now

[Dazel]

Been working fine all afternoon in the UK

[caperjim]

It funny how all these articles pop up saying Xbox live is hacked or down but the people that are actually playing online are not effected by any of this crap. Just another site looking for hits.

[Forbidden_Darkness]

I'm not defending any site, but almost every site on the internets is looking for hits, to grow their revenue and become bigger, its just that they do it differently. Some use flamebait headlines, some use baseless rumors, others exclusive information and such. N4G is one of them. So, obviously they are, baseless or not.

[DeFFeR]

N4G isn't the author of this article - they are hardly the author of any articles...

Your point has SOME merit, but not much. Getting short-term hits for falsifying a headline will get you a little bit of cash for a day or three, but continuously putting out well researched, well edited and actually important articles will get you long term hits, which equates to long term revenue.

For example - I mostly check the site on N4G before I read the whole article, just to see if it's a lame website (hello, Examiner, I'm looking at you...) to know if I need to skip it.

[ClimateKaren]

I can't say I agree with your justification of flame-baiting for hits by pointing out that everyone wants hits. Everyone wants money, but there are respectable ways of going and obtaining it.

I gave the agree though, for an opinion that I don't see expressed on here enough, which is that the structure of N4G is such that flame-baiting nonsense will ALWAYS be the first thing you see, and it will work for sites.

A button/ability to report an article for such content would probably go a long way to rectify the situation and make things on here a little more dignified, but you'll never see it happen. It's as you said.

[kikizoo]

Like all the propaganda articles like "my firmware brick my ps3" "this game don't sell" "bluray is doomed" "multiplatform perform better" etc etc

for one lie against xbl, you have 1000 against sony, and you can see here that xfanboyz are way more defensives than others :)

and don't forget that you wan have problems in uk, and not US..

[Sayai jin]

Working for me in the US.

[bspencer5008]

Locked joystick.. Or arthritis , greyed out menu options.. Colorblindess. Not being able to play anything online.. Pay your cable bill.

[narutogameking]

There's a little disruption in Xbox Live and people get paranoid......

I hope you Xbox 360 fans now know how annoying it is to get articles like this posted.

[WrAiTh Sp3cTr3]

Are you serious? People have a right to be a little paranoid after what happened with PSN. Xbox live gamers should be annoyed because quite frankly, it would take a lot to be on that kind of level that PSN went through.

[DeFFeR]

Who is paranoid? There are 11 comment streams above yours with not a single person having issues (other than someone who can't put a sentence together about the difference between Gears 2 and 3). Are you speaking about the article author? Because CLEARLY he did his research before putting fingers to keyboard.

Lastly, what does being an "Xbox 360 fan" have to do with this type of article? Having it be about 360 isn't any less annoying than it was about PSN for weeks on end... but looking at your bubbles, I'm assuming you have a track record for singling out a single "camp" of gamers.

[dead_eye]

Clearly there is nothing wrong with the service. These are just new features that have been added. You have to remember live is the ultimate online service and paid for so nothing bad can ever happen to it.

[WrAiTh Sp3cTr3]

No, just...no. Is it likely that it would happen on the scale of what happened with PSN? I dont think so. Could it happen on that level? It's possible.

[narutogameking]

lmfao r u serious?

[aviator189]

The site doesn't post any evidence of the outages and tons of users, including me, are saying live is working fine. And the people who are saying live is working for them are getting disagrees...

[BreakNeckSpeed]

They are ust butthurt fanboys with nothing better to do. They don't have an xbox so they can't check if xbox live is down or not, so they feed off these hit hunting articles as a means of downplaying live.

Pathetic is the word that comes to mind.

[outlawlife]

no issue here, only issue I have is BF3 beta freezing like mad, but that isn't live

[FlareDReborn]

So Microsoft getting attacked by hackers now? Wow cant believe its not sony again. Thank the lord!

[aviator189]

No, Live is just fine.

[Nate-Dog]

Was on today on a rare occasion for around an hour or so, didn't have any problems at all.

[Legion]

Way to comment and then throw a backhanded slap at the same time "Was on today on a rare occasion". Intentional or not.

[A-Glorious-Dawn]

No my friend, that's paranoia you have there.....
I see nothing in his comment that you should take offence too

[Nate-Dog]

Oh dear what is wrong with you? I have a PS3 and Xbox and only got the Xbox360 at the end of last year compared to a PS3 years upon years ago, and I only play Mass Effect on my Xbox, and other single-player games like Mass Effect and some Japanese titles. So I don't need to sign in since I don't play any games online nor do I have Xbox Gold. Just grow up.

[Gamer-Z]

Even if there was something wrong with xbox live Microsoft would never admit to being hacked.

[strifeblade]

Actually they have to its the law... remember Sony waited a week to do it?

[InTheLab]

Incoming price increase....

[SITH]

Fail article. This fool just discovered his crappy connection. There is nothing wrong with Xbox live. I have been on all day without a single issue.

[abczby]

Just look at how well designed the website is. It looks like it was designed by the same 12-year old who coded PSN's original security measures. Remarkable.

[drsnobby]

XBL is working just fine.this is an article of misinformation.the author of this crap want hits plain and simple.lies lies lies.

[Deadman64]

Lies. I have been playing all day with NO ISSUE

[RAmar101]

Its working just fine, only issue is online dash menues are loading to slow

I think it may be internal issues

[thespaz]

Loading to slow what? You never finished your sentence.

Online dash menus are loading to slow...........

[supyall]

works for me, i think the writer did just want to get hits.

[Hazmat13]

oh come on im A ps3 GUY BUT FUCKING HACKERS LEAVE GAMERS ALONE

[AO1JMM]

Hacked? Doubtfull...!

[tickticktick]

Another day another failed attempt.

[monkey602]

I genuinely was having trouble with getting a game on gears this morning. It would get stuck trying to "read players skill" for ages and then just wouldnt find a game. Tried resetting and gor stuck on the press start screen while it did something about player parties. I searched the forums but nobody else seemed to be getting the same issue. I thought I was screwed not quite sure if I'm relieved to see this now or not ha.

[Mutant-Spud]

That's what happened to me, so it's not all in our heads.

[forsakenskys]

Xbox LIVE is working for me

[No Way]

I just got off Battlefield 3 beta, for about an hour playing. Not one problem..
Was also playing Black Ops earlier in the day for about 2 hours. Not one problem..

[ME1989]

Working fine for me. Playing Gears 3 multiplayer as I speak.

[FlashXIII]

Xbox live hasn't always been stable.. Gears 2 release, Christmas periods (last year seemed fine though) to name a few of the times I remember HATING xbox live.

[Les-Grossman]

I played Gears Of War 3 for most of today with no problems

[trenso1]

Why is that when anything happens to xbl or psn people assume it's hackers it's getting old can we get past the psn breach I hope this ends soon for the people xbl so they can back to their games

[banner]

I just finished playing gears 3 online since like 7 in the morn. Had zero problems.

Even if there was the kind of issues this guy described, how did he come to the conclusion that live was hack? Seems like he's just reaching to have something to compare to psn issues...

[PickAShoe]

these hackers are messing with the wrong community. gamers might hack them back.

[KendrickGLS]

I love Xbox LIVE, but I don't really care about it getting hacked, since Microsoft won't make it free like psn, I think their getting what they deserve. I like Microsoft, but this charging crap has got to stop, eventhough I don't think it will. But @sirwut is right though, they are messing with the wrong community. Xbox Forever! Righteous!

[KendrickGLS]

Don't troll me because I'm just being neutral about the situation so it would be pointless if you did. Righteous!

[user9841288]

is there a site out there that is like n4g but isn't just troll bait nonsense? PM me if so because im done with this site. If 99% of everything put up is just BS what's the point ya know?

[BabyTownFrolics]

www.reddit.com/r/gaming

[Legion]

Funny, I haven't seen a single reply by anyone that has actually had the same issue. (anyone that plays on Xbox Live that is)

Just a lot of replies from trolls who seem happy to hear news of this false report of hacking.

Trolls are rampant today.

[MAULxx]

I seriously got to find another site for game news.

This one's getting too cluttered with drivel.

[hadouken007]

Consistently reliable, OK.

[PROJECTbadass]

been online playing gears all day... BS article

[fullmetal297]

Must be because of the number of people trying to sign-in to play Gears. I remember the crash back in 2007. There were so many people who bought an xbox in Christmas and so many people were trying to sign-in all at once.

[muddy9494]

Are you just trying for attention? XBL has been having no issues at all. If it was as widespread as you say, there would be something on Xbox's support page about this. Have you ever thought that it may be your Walmart connection that is causing any errors?

Do some research before you post this bull. I have talked with @XboxSupport on Twitter and they have had no issues like this reported.

[EDD213]

おわらにゃーいニャン猫

[miDnIghtEr20C_SfF]

Have played with nothing wrong for the last year or so. It's all good in my hood.

[redcar121]

this post is full of bs ... do we all agree bs bs bs bs

[Snowii]

isent it ironic?

[NeloAnjelo]

Gamers United > Hackers United.

[AlphaJunk]

Been playing Gears of War 3 and Battlefield 3 beta since yesterday with no problems... I think you just wanted to write and article for some attention. lame and fail.

[blacktiger]

when this *hit happens, I want to know what Xbox Live Hatred Gamer have to say, but to the rest of the XBOX Gamer, don't worry, these hacker will get caught! I hope you don't have to go through what PSN Gamers went through!

[devilhunterx]

You don't get what you paid for

[Dorwrath]

No issues yesterday, none today. Article is full of BS.

[ForROME]

I am playing Halo 3 online no issues

[Treyb3yond]

Wait, why am I paying for a service which is getting similar issues to psn?

Hmm this is the last xbl subscription for me. It can't be justified.

[no_more_heroes]

I've been using the ESPN app all weekend and it's been working just fine, unless it's something specific to just mp games over live.

[KendrickGLS]

Xbox LIVE Forever!