Microsoft is well known for bringing down the ban hammer on those Xbox Live users who it feels have abused the network. Microsoft are less well known for lifting that hammer and letting previously banned Xbox consoles back onto the Xbox Live network.

In  the kerfuffle following the hacking of Sony’s Playstation Network, it seems that some banned Xbox Live users are now able to access the Xbox Live network after applying a system update file that is available through FortressCraft Forums

As one FortressCraft Forum administrator says, the update is painfully easy to do:

“In order to do this you are going to need to take your banned console and plug it into live, then you are going to have to manually update your dash using this file. Simply put that on the root of a USB stick and reboot the console, it should automatically start installing the update.”

However, as Oliver Haslam at Redmond Pie pointed out Microsoft has begun to plug this hole:

Before everyone gets too excited though, Microsoft has plugged this particular hole, perhaps showing that the allowing of banned machines back onto Live wasn’t intentional.

[Cross-posted at Winextra]