Approximately three weeks before the game's September 15th release date, Halo Reach has hit file sharing sites after hackers managed to download the game via the Xbox Live Marketplace.

The news comes from IGN who claims that Halo Reach was made available to reviewers via the Xbox Live Marketplace, but was cracked by a group of modders who have since spoken publically about the security breach.

"So after a lot of .xex cracking etc.. Me and my team finally did it, we got Halo: Reach!," the modders said. "This is not released for public, and we are not really planning on releasing either."

"We are aware of claims being made regarding a security exploit related to 'Halo: Reach' and are aggressively investigating the matter," a Microsoft spokesperson told IGN. "We have no further details to share at this time."

Sounds like Microsoft could be too late. Halo Reach has already began to appear on some file sharing websites.