In brief: Xbox Live security? No problem for boy, 5

SAN DIEGO – A 5-year-old San Diego boy has outwitted the sharpest minds at Microsoft – he’s found a backdoor to the Xbox.

Kristoffer Von Hassel managed to log in to his father’s Xbox Live account. When the password log-in screen appeared, Kristoffer simply hit the space button a few times and hit enter.

Robert Davies said that just after Christmas he noticed his son playing games he supposedly couldn’t access, KGTV-TV reported.

Davies, who works in computer security, said he reported the issue to Microsoft, which fixed the bug and recently listed Kristoffer on its website as a “security researcher.”

Kristoffer’s response: “I’m gonna be famous!”

A Microsoft spokesman didn’t immediately return a call for comment.

It’s not Kristoffer’s first triumph. At a year old, he bypassed a cellphone toddler lock by holding down the “home” button.

Execution carried out after court spurns request

HUNTSVILLE, Texas – A serial killer was put to death in Texas after the U.S. Supreme Court rejected his lawyers’ demand that the state release information about where it gets its lethal injection drug.

Tommy Lynn Sells was executed Thursday evening. He became the first inmate injected with a dose of newly replenished pentobarbital that Texas prison officials obtained to replace an expired supply of the sedative.

His attorneys had hoped the courts would force prison officials to reveal more information about the pharmacy that supplied the drug. They argued the new pentobarbital could lead to unconstitutional pain.

The state prison agency wants the information kept secret to protect the pharmacy from threats of violence.

Sells was sentenced to death for fatally stabbing a 13-year-old South Texas girl in 1999.