Here’s a technique we’ll not be adding to our list of fun ways to escalate your complaint: The 18-year-old who recently hacked Comcast and took down the company’s homepage and webmail told Wired that it was Comcast’s own fault… The hacker, known as EBK, called Comcast to let them know they’d been hacked. The manager scoffed and hung up:
“If he wasn’t such a prick, he could have avoided all of that,” says EBK. “I wasn’t even really thinking. Plus, I’m just so mad at Comcast. I’m tired of their shitty service.”
Comcast Hijackers Say They Warned the Company First [Wired]
(Photo: cmorran123)
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It seems they just hacked a dns registrar and did not actually hack comcast.
You know, I hate Comcast, too. I mean I HATE them. I think they’re pure evil, and I wish some force of nature could come along and somehow only destroy Comcast and its ancillary businesses, because that’s what they deserve.
BUT.
I really don’t think the smart way to protest Comcast’s shitty service is to hack their site, thus causing thousands of others to get even shittier service (and no webmail) while the site was down.
I applaud the gesture, but this kid punished Comcast’s long-suffering customers rather than punishing Comcast itself.
@Crymson_77: That isn’t the funniest part, they will go to Club Fed and be given jobs taking calls as CSR’s, allowing them access to computers so that they can hack Comcrap from behind bars.
Network Solutions spokeswoman Susan Wade disputes the hackers’ account. “We now know that it was nothing on our end,” she says. “There was no breach in our system or social engineering situation on our end.”
I find it amusing that one of the crappiest ISP is using one of the crappiest registrar. But hey, if Netsol says it did not come from them, it must be totally true. Though there would be no way to temper with the DNS settings on a domain without messing with the registrar: maintaining DNS settings for domains is all they do.
Now for the hackers, poor kids, they are in for a world of trouble. It is amazing how much disruption they cause with such a low tech attack. Totally not worth it.
@akede2001: Heaven forbid people use their ISP’s business-class offerings.
When I used Comcast, I felt like doing this about seven times a day. The only things that would have been better would be if A. The crackers hadn’t been caught; and B. They hadn’t change anything except make all the links point to comcastmustdie.com That would be perfect.
@Buran: People can use their business class offerings, but they need to understand that with cable internet, there is downtime, and shit happens.
When you have a dedicated T1, shit can happen, but the T1 offer is under contract to fix it asap. In my dealings with T1, I’ve never seen one go down. It’s dedicated, and if my server doesnt ping, because I reboot the router or something, I have a phone call from AT&T within minutes.
While I don’t support what they did, it should be a reminder that Comcast sucks. I know my comment is low, but it’s the truth…
After a particularly unpleasant visit I had to my local Comcast office this past week I now consider this guy my hero…and I’m a fan of his myspace photo too.
I wonder when he will be on the job market. The US is really short on such skilled talent. Attacking the DNS was not especially brilliant but more than a script kiddie attack.
Keeping and handling all of the comcast traffic was amazing.
Through social engineering and networking knowledge they managed to create more real pull than any multi-millionaire could.
I really hope that this nets them a nice scholarship and or a job.
@Techguy1138: these kids according to what they have all been posting on wired somehow got the information needed to talk their way into accessing comcast’s account for their domains through network solutions. it was just account manipulation. nothing special.
If comcast or network solutions don’t/won’t explain in court how they were hacked, even under seal, then the kids get off
Win-Win.
@tawni: It hit the realm of special when they were repeatedly able to thwart attempts to stop the attack.
If the outage was that simple a single refresh of the dns tables from known good values would have stopped it in minutes.
It should be a slow news day when a simple attack makes wired.
@Squeegoth:
That’s their problem, trying to let a truck do the job of a system of tubes.
@Hairyback:
The kid cost you 2 days, or Comcast?
@Norcross: Why does it matter? Is there a rule book somewhere that says hackers must use only X software? if all his friends use aim, why wouldnt he?
@xtc46: just seemed strange, given that (a) their ‘king’ had actually HACKED aol, (b) it’s riddled with ads and bugs that track users. considering they are hackers, one would think they wouldn’t use it.
@mac-phisto: my family lives in haiti and it’s effed up to say that someone should be sent to other people’s suffering as “punishment”. People in Haiti were handed a shitty lot in life, there’s no reason to mock it.
When hackers shut down a service, they aren’t getting back at The Man all they’re doing is screwing The People. Hackers like these guys, and the group who hacked into Stage6 shutting it down for days, aren’t doing us any favors. Knowing that my evil Comcast interferes with downloading torrents, I curled up into a ball and cried for days when I was unable to download via Stage6. Ok, maybe I didn’t cry for days but I was very miffed for a few hours. If hackers think they are acting on our behalf, ummm… thanks but no thanks. I can do without that kind of “help”.
Sure Comcast sucks caca, but disabling a service that millions rely upon benefits no one.
@Lambasted: It benefits Verizon and every other comcast competitor.
@donkeyjote: Holy Jumpin F***** Jesus!! Are you actually defending the use of AOL here?!
Oh, God… my eyes… they’re burning!
Ahhh!!!!
Can somebody tell me why Comcast sucks so much? I pay my bill every month, and every time I turn the TV on there is television. And (almost) every time I go to check my e-mail, I connect to the server and download messages. I pay like 65 dollars a month.
What part about that sucks?
I just want to see the kid’s dong.
@donkeyjote: I meant not benefiting the parties involved: hackers, customers, and the company.
Hacking definitely benefits competitors. After a video site has been hacked the first ones accused of the hack are competitors. That definitely happened when Stage6 was hacked. Until the identity of the culprits was discovered, people were speculating that it was YouTube who had paid hackers to try to shut Stage6 down. LOL!
@Fatdogsmells: i’m not mocking it, i’m saying the authorities should make them do some real work doing good in the world so they gain some…perspective.
i picked haiti b/c frankly, they need a lot of help down there right now. & where better for two suburbanite brats without a clue to learn what it’s really like in the world? maybe even gain some skills that are worth bragging about on the internet.
@ViperBorg: The Aim network/client != AOL. Sure, it might be aol created or owned, but aim is nowhere near as bad as AOL as a company or software. Just get a third party client (like iChat
)
@Lambasted: If you want to look at it glass half empty sure, but it benefits the hacker (stress relief, bragging rights if they don’t get caught) and the customers (The company would (or should due to common sense) go “Ohh, huge gaping security hole we were just raped by… Maybe we should close those up.”)
@XianZomby:
The fact that it is 65 dollars per month may suck, depending on the level of service you actually USE.
Otherwise, just type “comcast” in the search field near the top of the page.
I’ll bet their CRACK TEAM of web specialists said it couldn’t be done! The same Geek morons who used to work for Fireslog and Dork Squad.
@donkeyjote: True, true.
@Lambasted: Lmao are you serious? Media defender was the one responsible for stage 6, they didn’t try to cover it up, and they were turned over to the FBI. Aside from the fact all they did was flood a server with syn packets, not exactly high tech. I wouldn’t insult others by calling Media Defender ‘hackers’
Well I think the thing these hackers have going in their favor is “Trial by jury of peers”. Something they are entitled to by law (most of the time). So assuming they arent denied that all they need is anyone who has ever had Comcast sitting in that jury box. Enough said.
Look, as a Comcast employee who works in one of the larger call centers, hate all you want the job provides for my family and the benifits can’t be beat, all the folks who celebrate what this guy did, and yeas a few of us here got a good laugh out of it, just know he generated a TON of extra call volume not only to HSI tech support but to all ques as people were selecting everything from billing to video sales to find out what was going on, making a long wait time even longer