Slashdot Mirror

The PDF (found via xbox-experts.com:
  Identity Theft and Used Gaming Consoles: Recovering Personal Information from Xbox 360 Hard Drives

So, they downloaded a commercial version that does the equivalent of "grep -a '[0-9]\{15\}' /dev/sda" and found a few 15-digit numbers ("OMFG! NUMBERZ! Those must be CREDIT CARD NUMBERZ! What else should there be NUMBERZ for?") in a 250 gigabyte dataset mostly consisting of random savegames, artwork (title caches) and media.

That's... impressive. Impressively stupid for two PhDs and a Research Assistant. And *they* have published work on Xbox 360 before?

this is just some unfounded rumor that has no basis on reality

It's more than a rumour, it's a research paper from some forensics experts that has been submitted to a conference. Of course, that does not mean that it is correct, and afaik it has not been published yet.

The PDF (found via xbox-experts.com:
Identity Theft and Used Gaming Consoles: Recovering Personal Information from Xbox 360 Hard Drives

The relevant text shows that they just got a credit card hit from some forensics tool:

Performing a fast scan on one of the drives resulted in a possible credit card hit as demonstrated in Image 10. Although this does not definitively prove there are any credit card numbers on the hard drive, it is highly probable given the results obtained. The Bank Identification Number in this hit identifies this as a Bank of America Discover Card [37].

The authors appeal to have credible prior experience in digital forensics:

Dr. Asley L. Podhradsky, Drexel University
Dr. Rob D'Ovidio, Drexel University
Cindy Casey, Drexel University

They have published work on XBOX 360 previously, so they may have some experience in this specific area (or not):
The Xbox 360 and Steganography: How Criminals and Terrorists could be Going Dark
A Practitioners Guide to the Forensic Investigation of Xbox 360 Gaming Consoles

Well then just grab it here for evaluation. If you find it useful, support the author and buy it. If not, delete it and save your money.

Ever heard of Youtube?

For starters

Ever RTFA?

4. Infringing webpage(s):

http://hotfile.com/
http://usershare.net/
http://2shared.com/
http://4shared.com/
http://mediafire.com/
http://megaupload.com/
http://sendspace.com/
http://teradepot.com/
http://zippyshare.com/

None of these are Google-owned sites. Doesn't hurt to try throwing the DMCA at Google though.

Here's some mirrors of the original document, in case the original site is slashdotted:

http://www.scribd.com/doc/28853862/201001-acta

http://www.mediafire.com/?wdnjg2nrmne

http://rapidshare.com/files/367572656/201001_acta.pdf
http://hotfile.com/dl/34373604/038b957/201001_acta.pdf.html