An employee of Microsoft’s Xbox Live had his home surrounded by deputies recently after the King County Sheriff’s Office received a series of scary text messages making it seem as if he were caught up in a Jack Bauer plotline — saying that armed Russian attackers with military mines had cut his phone lines and broken into his house, shooting his son and leaving a blinking red device on the table.
The messages turned out to be an elaborate hoax, apparently sent by hackers as a retaliatory act, reports Robert Baldino of the Sammamish Patch news site, explaining that the unnamed Xbox Live employee heads a team that shuts down hackers who try to infiltrate the Microsoft online system. The messages were routed via an AT&T emergency communications system.
See the Sammamish Patch story for all the details and excerpts from the wild text messages that were routed to the 911 operators. The Aug. 29 incident is under investigation.
