Mandatory Xbox 360 update sneakily halts Call of Duty pirates

Apparently, Microsoft sneaked a super secret feature into its recent, Boot-to-Disc-restoring mandatory Xbox 360 firmware update: the ability to stop Call of Duty: Black Ops and Modern Warfare 2 pirates and hackers dead in their tracks. Posters on the Xbox-Scene forums are claiming that consoles with backed-up versions of the two games took an awfully long time to download the relatively small update -- and once it arrived, it stopped backup versions of the two games from working altogether.

Was this a coincidence, or was Microsoft targeting illicit players of two of Xbox Live's most active multiplayer titles? We've contacted Microsoft to try and find out.