When playing Gears on Monday night I witnessed quite a disturbing event.
We were playing a private game and half way through a gamer called XennoX ZA joined, however he was already in the game and had been for a while. Originally I thought it was just another Gears notification glitch but it became apparent very quickly that we now had two players called XennoX ZA in our game. The ghost player kept quite and never said anything but by his reactions in game it was apparent that he could hear us.
After the round ended and he still refused to communicate we decided to kick him. However we could not. The host tried and the system said he had been kicked but he never did? When I tried to view his profile I couldn’t it just said ‘Profile not available’. In the end we just had to drop the game and re-host from scratch.
What I find very disturbing about this is that unlike when gamertags are normally stolen this time they were both logged on at the exact same time, which goes against all the Xbox Live rules.
Now I have no idea if this ghost had access to any credit card details or Microsoft points on this profile but it is very worrying that a person can be using your account and you may never know.
I have asked Microsoft for a response on this but at the time of writing I am yet to receive an official response from the Live team.
[Update] The Microsoft Xbox Live team has looked into this issue and from what I have been told it appears to be a case of crossed lines. Since there has not been another report of this happening anywhere I guess we will have to believe them.Last Updated: September 12, 2007
Ruslan
September 12, 2007 at 08:53
Isnt XennoX on a 3G connection? Could the latency have caused some weird anomaly within Gears of War?
koldFU5iON
September 12, 2007 at 09:06
I find this wierd… since XennoX ZA is well not a common name and only SA guys really put the ZA at the end of their Tag? I’m sure it must be a glitch? I remember that when a guy climbs into a match his name is set to ‘Marcus’ so maybe this guy has a cracked XBOX? maybe he was banned from live, and now is just assuming the identity of someone in the lobby I don’t necessarily think that he has access to that person’s profile tho… the mystery continues
LazySAGamer
September 12, 2007 at 09:22
@Ruslan, we played against the other guy for a while… he was real..
@kold, I do also think that he didn’t have access to the full profile but it is disconcerting knowing that someone can just play on your gamertag like that… We do have ZA hackers as well though 😉
Gazza
September 12, 2007 at 09:25
Well i rekon as kold says its got something to do with cracked/chiped 360’s Because had he stolen Xennox’s account live would not allow them to be online at the same time, mabey its a chip/firmware change that bypasses lives security system in order for the PIRATE to play his games on live?
XennoX
September 12, 2007 at 10:29
@ Gazza, possibly, but what still baffles me is the fact that we were both had the same names and both of us were in the same game.
Craig Nicholson
September 12, 2007 at 11:55
If I were Microsoft I’d respond that “Xbox LIVE is not officially supported in South Africa yet”. :p
What it looks like is a simple state synchronisation issue – very common in software.
LazySAGamer
September 12, 2007 at 23:06
@Craig that is what I thought as well but it doesn’t explain how the guy managed to join a private game…
Oh and who said anything about SA we are all based in the UK 😛
DELARY
October 9, 2007 at 10:50
well its the first time i here of that happening, I can remember playing against a XennoX ZA IN HALO 3, BUT HE WAS TALKING?,Just chech you account and your password and change it bro!
GlitchKing
November 17, 2007 at 20:00
This is indeed a glitch. You can do this in Gears of War. Heres how it works. Im not giving the tutorial, if you want the tutorial head over to glitcher.net.
This glitch allows you to make any profile imaginable. For example if I wanted to play as the gamertag Xbox Live, I simply perform the glitch and play as Xbox Live. The catch behind this the changed gamertag has to be there host. Thats why you could not boot him. When you boot someones guest it simply kills them. All you need to do is boot the main player thats hosting the guest name and woolah your done. No worries about this glitch, its’ not an actual gamertag stealing glitch, its all visual. You can also perform the glitch in another method and turn your gamertag completely invisible.
Regards,
GlitchKing
Glitcher.net
LazySAGamer
November 18, 2007 at 07:13
Hi GlitchKing that is interesting, however that was not the case for this one. XennoX ZA was not hosting the game another one of the players was. Also the host is well known in the community and I can promise you he wasn’t doing anything funny and neither was XennoX who was quite freaked out about it…
Thanks for the info though it is interesting to hear.
GlitchKing
May 1, 2008 at 02:42
I meant host as in the host of the glitched gamertag, sorry. It doesnt have to be the host of the game. You can perform this glitch with any name on any game. Heres how the glitch works.
You create a gamertag when offline thats not connected to Xbox Live so it can be anything you want. For example you create the gamertag Xbox Live, you can play as Xbox Live offline but when it comes to online you cant.
Sign in to your regular xbox live account (GLITCHERdotNET is mine). Sign in Controller 2 as guest. Join any game, once the loading screen hit the center (X) xbox live guide button (w/e its called) then sign out your guest. Once signed out (you have to do this extremely quick) sign in the regular (non xbox live account) Xbox Live gamertag. If done quickly enough and correctly your guest’s gamertag will be Xbox Live.
For invisible gamertag all you do is have you and your guest signed in and join a game. Once the loading screen comes on simply loggout your guest. Your gamertag will be invisible.
In his case someone probably wanted to mess with him and created a non xbox live account exactly as his gamertag and peformed the gamertag glitch on it.
-GK
GlitchKing@Glitcher.net