Security researcher Ashley Podhradsky told in his interview with Kotaku, that the Microsoft company is to blame for such data leakage, whose experts have not sufficiently worked out a reliable mechanism for user data removal, while they protect their own proprietary information in most reliable way.

Podgradski and his colleagues purchased a reconditioned Xbox 360 console from a Microsoft-authorized seller. They downloaded a common hacking set for modding to get access to the system, including files and folders on the hard drive. After some manipulation, they were able to get credit card information of the original owner.

Podgradski says that he is not an expert in such operations, but the comparative ease, with which it was possible to retrieve data, suggests that skilled hackers have been already churning such procedure out and practicing bank data retrieva from old consoles at wholesale.

The expert advises: if you want to sell your old console, you'd better take the hard drive out, connect it to a PC and use the known utility software to delete information completely (not just format the HDD). For example, the Boot & Nuke (DBAN) utility will work fine.

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