A report from BBC News last week revealed a new malicious tactic some gamers are using to boot people from Xbox Live servers.
According to the report, the 17 million subscriber service is under siege by groups of irate players who are sick of their competition in games such as "Halo 3" or "Call of Duty: World At War."
These players boot their competition from games by flooding their Internet Protocol (IP) address with data so the Xbox Live serves boot the player from the game.
According to the story, games played online via Xbox Live are "hosted" by individual consoles and not the Xbox Live servers themselves. This means that if there are problems with the console transferring data to the servers, Xbox Live will terminate the user from the game.
In this case, the data transfer problem is created by the overflow of traffic created by users that maliciously flood data to the consoles IP address.
Nevertheless, this means that individuals with grudges on Xbox Live can attack fellow users and eliminate them from the game.
This brings up idea that there has been an increased trend in online video games that provide a sense of accomplishment and competition based on individual statistics. Xbox Live users have a "Gamertag" with a score that reflects their performance in video games they play online and off.
Likewise, players are sometimes ranked based off of their play online. For example, "NHL 09" uses a ranking system based on the player's record in online play.
These new hackers are simply and literally eliminating their competition.
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