Comcast Tech Abuses Power To Rack Vegeneance On Xbox Hackers
DSL Reports has the story of an outsourced Comcast tech was fired after bragging online about using internal Comcast systems to get vengeance on hackers disrupting his Xbox. After annoying little twerps intentionally overloaded his Xbox with data (known as packet flooding), Mark Ribeiro, who describes himself as a "Comcast tier 2.5 support agent, which essentially means im one of the top 1% elitest agents," went to work. First he identified one of the perps and found out he was a Comcast customer. Then he looked up the kid's info in the Comcast support system and called the kid's father...
After telling the father that his son was involved in illegal activities and it would result in their internet getting shut off for a week, Mark writes on the halo3forums he heard "the father began to yell at his son, i then heard a loud smack, and then sobbing, and then cracking noise as if something was breaking..it then occured to me that the father had just beat the sh.t out of his kid, and the cracking noise was the sound of a hammer on an xbox." Comcast says it has identified the employee who violated the users privacy to an epic level and told Convergys to fire him. As anyone who read our insider post, "Convergys Call Center Sucks Because Agents Are Stabbing Each Other And Making Out In The Halls," Comcast and Covergys are renowned discerning employers of classy lads. As an added bonus, here's a picture DSL Reports acquired of Mark toking on a bong:
**(UPDATED)To Those of YOU who packet flood...be aware [halo3forums]
Outsourced Comcast Tech Gets Vengeance On Xbox Cheaters - But in the process abuses Comcast support systems, violating user privacy... [DSLReports]
This is a test using rich text formatting and html links. It's the generic "company" ad that should appear on all posts with the Company category if they don't have an ad attached to a specific company.
Post a comment
Comments:
Sweet sweet vengeance... or is it?
hackers do piss me off!!!!
I hate to see what they'll do to those who download pr0n via bittorrent.
Hopefully comcast won't pay for the "kid's" broken x-box
It's kind of funny. Just about any org that uses contract call centers to provide their support is adamant that their operators not reveal that they work for a third party, as if they will fool everyone into thinking those people actually work directly for their company. But the moment one of them screws up, oop, that guy worked for some other company, don't blame us.
Karma
Good for the little hacker bastard, I hope his daddy whooped his ass good.
Oh, and real mature of the comcast guy to get bitchy when the kid calls him a fag, but then he refers to the packet flood folks as fags
Whatever. That forum post is total bullshit anyway.
A bittersweet victory for this guy, Im guessing.
I probably would have done the exact same thing in his shoes. What he did was a personal vendetta, but I don't see him really doing anything wrong. Its not like he just switched them right off, he at least called first.
I love how he beats the shit out of his kid he didnt even know wtf he did and he breaks the xbox idgaf id start beating the shit out of daddy they can take the internet no one touches my XBAWKES
If a Comcast customer is using their network for illegal packet-flooding, isn't that reason enough to contact the customer and/or cut off service?
Assuming the Comcast employee was courteous to the parent and followed a reasonable protocol, what happened to the kid is the parent's fault.
This is not like me to say this...in fact this is my first time typing this...but...
PWNED!
@COELACANTH: Yes, but it wasn't this particular employee's job to do that, he went outside of his scope of responsibility. Not only that, but there are legal issues to consider as well; what if that kid's father had been a lawyer and sued?
did he overstep his boundries? hell yes and deserves to be fired for it.
But my god was that some seriously hilarious ownage. It might have not been right, but deep down EVERYONE wants to do it.
"With this power didn't come the wisdom to avoid using a real name..." *sigh*
@snoop-blog: I guess if any of these people were "Hackers" then you would have a reason to be pissed at them.
Overloaded his xbox with data? WTF is this guy talking about? He probably got dropped from live while getting ripped on by these kids in halo 3, and decided to use his oh so mighty position at comcast to get revenge.
Well, there goes the only tech at Comcast that knew how things actually worked.
tech support tier 2.5? i feel a spinal tap moment coming on here.
I call shenanigans on the whole thing.
The moral of the story : don't brag online :)
Do IT quietly, and silently enjoy your vengeance +++
I hate to post a third time but this actually infuriates me. The guy got so angry over having a single game screwed up that he caused all this shit to happen to get revenge. This is just sick and wrong. I approve of people getting their comeuppance, but let people who's job it is to do this do it.
Meh. The plight of the nerd and his nerd gear.
Yeah surprise surprise someone at a Internet provider knew what was going on. MS takes far to long to catch on to things like this, I got fed up with all the kiddie script newbs on the Halo side of things.
The child was involved in illegal activity. Is his monitoring of the activity through his Xbox legal? I'm pretty sure getting a phone number through his place of emply is illegal. I'm also pretty sure that threatening someone with removal of paid services is also illegal.
Don't get me wrong, the kid got what he deserved, exploiting a system and such, but did this cross the line into vigilantism?
The kid didn't deserve to be beaten, but I think the Comcast guy did a good thing here and maybe some hackers will learn from this.
I am so sick of April 1st
@Demonbird: Whose job is it? You mean the Revenge Squad? It's okay if you post more than once. Really.
@Demonbird: i don't know about xbox, but on psp if you get booted from socom, it takes close to 10 mins to sign in, and find another game. it takes longer if your trying to start up a game. so if i start a game and if finally gets full, and then a hacker comes along and booted the whole room, it wastes up a lot of time, and effort. sux if you only have like an hour to play. then there's the hackers that just cheat, and never die, when your actually trying to play the game the way it was intended to build up your stats. i can totally see how this guy got soo pissed.
This guy doesn't strike me as particularly "elite" For one, his home network was vulnerable to the most basic of hacks, and his revenge was ratting the kid out to his parents.
@ChuckECheese:
Leave it to XBL and/or Bungie to eventually sort this kind of stuff out. It's just a game. I'm really hoping this guy faces more severe repercussions for this than he already has.
Script kiddy, so it's not like the brat has any real skill.
Technically, keeping it btn a brat and his dad isn't violating any privacy policy, at least not any that's defensible.
Next time the tech should record the damn thing, and make a vid off of it.
It's "wreak" not "rack"
i love it when people say it's just a game. no to you it's just a game. to some people it's more. it's a hobby. if you built train sets and i came in and destroyed your badass setup, you'd be pissed. well not much different here.
Ha, that is sweet vengeance.
This sounds like an episode of The Equalizer. When you can't find justice versus online punk kids, call The Equalizer. He'll have their parents whack the living hell out of their asses! With the amount of juvenile delinquents on Xbox Live, he'd never be out of work.
Pwn3d.
@snoop-blog:
It is very different here. With this, you play a game, after that the game is gone. with a model train set you can spend many many hours building something physical you can revisit and enjoy continuously. The game is forgotten when you start another one. the train set is still there when you walk away.
If you spaz out about getting cheated in a game you have problems. I can understand being pissed off. I've been pissed about being cheated before, but going and doing something like this means you either have anger issues or you are an incredibly childish and imbalanced person.
I'm glad he did... Cheaters on 360, or system or situation is unacceptable. If they cannot play on the same grounds as everybody else, they shouldn't play.
@snoop-blog:
well then I don't know about you but what would you really be more angry about? Getting cheated in one of the hundreds of games you played of Halo 3 or thee train set that you spent many many hours building and perfecting getting destroyed?
Update: that sound wasn't the Xbox breaking. It was the kid's skull.
pls define "Rack Vengeance". WTH is that?
now THAT's good parenting. Bravo.
What a puss. Instead of using any knowledge at all this douche uses his little Comcast tools to find the kid and try to get even. Sounds like he isn't that smart if he can't take care of some packet flooding coming at him.
Just another worthless tech with 0 skill.
"...the top 1% elitist agents..." lol. This toolbag thinks he's in The Matrix
If he got fired then I'm glad. He deserves to rot on the streets like the worthless piece of crap he is.
@Komrade_Kayce: You really don't see anything wrong with that? Seriously?
He used confidential information to threaten someone.
That alone is enough to warrant termination. If the rest of the story is true, it could be enough to place him in legal trouble as well.
I wouldn't exactly call the kid an upstanding citizen either.