For most five year-olds, rule breaking usually consists of jumping in puddles and staying up past bedtime. Not so, for Kristoffer Von Hassel, the son of San Diego security researcher Robert Davies.

You see, young Von Hassel managed to discover a major security flaw in the Xbox One gaming console on his own, and Microsoft, the company producing the Xbox One, has taken notice.

Von Hassel discovered he could access his father’s Xbox Live account—a premium feature that connects users to the Internet with other users—and play games outside of his age range simply by plugging in a wrong password and then pressing the space bar several times on the next password prompt. Apparently those seven spaces could act as a backdoor to any account. Computer programmers often build hidden backdoors into software applications so they can fix bugs. If hackers or others (in this case, Von Hassel) learn about a back door, the feature may pose a security risk. Read more…