​Another bad week for Xbox: Hackers leak developer software

One more piece of bad news for Microsoft in 2014. After a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack brought the Xbox Live online service to a standstill over the Christmas holiday, hackers have now reportedly leaked vital development software that could enable people to make their own Xbox games and deliver them for free on the web.

A group calling themselves H4LT sent out a tweet Tuesday with the note, "Hey, @Xbox! We thought we'd drop on by and End 2014 with a Bang ;)," and a link to download the Xbox One software development kit, which Microsoft gives to its developers to make games and apps for the console.

Microsoft does not make its developers kit public, and releasing it into the wild could open the possibility for rogue programmers to cook up their own apps and modifications. For now, that shouldn't happen, since developers need to be authorized by and registered with Microsoft to publish games, but it's one step toward the establishment of a "homebrew" industry.