Unlimited Ammo ‘virus’ infects other Xbox 360 players like an STD

The Xbox 360 version of Modern Warfare 2 seems to be suffering from an STD. An 'unlimited ammo virus' seems to be spreading itself throughout Xbox Live. Several hundreds of Xbox 360 players have been reporting that they joined a MP match, then finding that ammo counter 'doesn't work' and that reloading times seem to be absent. In other words: unlimited ammo and virtually no reloading, on all weapons, including the AC-130 and the  grenade launcher for instance.

This 'virus' is that bad, that many people on Twitter are Tweeting that it has become unplayable or that they'll stick to the singleplayer until it has been fixed.

In contrary what most people think, this is NOT a glitch. It's a mod, created by a highly skilled monkey modder and bascially works like this:

You can "catch" it from private matches.
Once you have it, if you host everyone you're playing with has the "bug" and infinite ammo.
Any game they now host they infect everyone else playing with infinite ammo.
Basically infinite ammo is a private match setting that changes your config to be like "Infiniteammo=1"

Thing is, it would reset as soon as you leave the private match.
But the private match bug makes it stay on until you enter a new private match where it's off.
When you join a match your console sets it's settings to match the hosts. This is hard-coded into the engine to make the lobbies work, typically for gametype rules, to make sure everyone matches. This is a global thing. If he turned on god mode everyone would have god mode. If he changed gravity everyones gravity changes.

So someone has infinite ammo=1, you join. yours changes to 1 to match his. Later on someone joins your game, your using infinite ammo=1 so it "infects" his console and changes his.

Typically at the end of the match your console changes all the match settings back, but since infinite ammo isn't something they expected people to mess with, it isn't flagged to change back. Since the call to match host settings is a global thing, and the call to change it all back is entry specific.

Source: http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showpost.php?p=12498204&postcount=1

In other words:

It passes from host to host. So if the original guy who has a modded 360 gets host (let's call him host zero) he can enable the infinite ammo cheat.
Then, host zero leaves. MW2 starts for a new host, and the information of host zero is passed on to the new host, "infecting" his cache.
As long as the new, infected host stays in the same lobby, it will keep spreading to new hosts.

Source: a recent comment of iRageQuit on one of our posts

To get rid of the mod, you'll have to disconnect from Live and reboot your 360.
Source: http://kotaku.com/5426605/modern-warfare-2-on-360-busted-ammo-in-plentiful-supply-%5Bupdate%5D

For those of you interested in the technical details of the mod, I'm sorry but I have to disappoint you. Little is known about it at the moment.
But what I do can say is that it's basically a mod that has been installed by a modder on his xbox 360's harddrive using a hacked xbox 360 kernel. From there, it spreads further, as explained how above, to other people and it'll be stored on their hard drive as well, but not permanently, just in their cache thus the mod will be removed from your xbox 360 if rebooted, as stated above. Getting this hack to work on your own xbox 360 involves

Advanced knowledge of modding, A Flashed xbox, Transfer Cables and the correct profile editor files.

Luckily, IW is on it.. well, sort of. Good old Robby Tweets: "It's being addressed" and that "it'll be eliminated soon enough". Far from a concrete time line for an update, but at least it shows IW is aware of the problem and pretending they're looking into it.

Interesting detail: According to Xboxic, you actually may get banned from Xbox Live for using this unlimited ammo mod. Possibly it may be for only 24 hours but if you repeat the action again and get caught, the ban could be made permanent. LoL like you can help it you got infected by this 'virus'.
Source: http://www.xboxic.com/news/5640

Above is just one of the many many demo videos you can easily find on YouTube while searching for 'unlimited ammo modern warfare 2'

Submitted by many many people via email (at least 25 emails). Thanks guys !

- KingOfTehInternets