Microsoft has confirmed that the Xbox Live accounts of several senior current and former employees have been targeted by hackers.

“We are aware that a group of attackers are using several stringed social engineering techniques to compromise the accounts of a handful of high-profile Xbox Live accounts held by current and former Microsoft employees,” the company told The Verge in a statement.

“We are actively working with law enforcement and other affected companies to disable this current method of attack and prevent its further use. Security is of critical importance to us and we are working every day to bring new forms of protection to our members.”

Apparently the hackers managed to discover the employee’s social security numbers and then used these alongside some social engineering information to gain access to the accounts and then sell the access on.

It appears that the group is only targeting Microsoft employees and the company is moving quickly to shut down this access so don’t go crazy and start panicking. Also it wasn’t Microsoft itself that got hacked it was another company who held the social security numbers, the hackers then used these to access a loophole in Microsoft’s security to make the system believe they owned the account.