Comcast Domain Hackers Speak → ugh

"I wasn't even really thinking. Plus, I'm just so mad at Comcast. I'm tired of their shitty service."

So negativly impact all their customers... nice move. Another thing they could have done was just cancel service.

This is one of the very few ways the average joe (or in this case, the average hacker joe) can make a statement to a giant corporation that will actually be heard.

Although questionable whether going to jail for Federal crimes is worth the effort I am not surprised by people getting to this point of fed up with not just Comcast but all the corporations wringing more and more money out of the American consumer promising the world and delivering peanuts.

There will be a lot more of this

Safe to say their service will be canceled pretty soon or more like their parent's service will be canceled and they won't be very happy. I see a very bright future for these 2 idiots.

The only thing anyone hears from this is that some kid can't resolve his problems rationally.

I hope the FBI tracks them down and throws their sorry butts in prison. We'll see if they are still laughing then.

You must not have ever tried to rationally resolve an issue with Comcast. It's next to impossible. Here in the Houston metro area, we had Time Warner/Road Runner service & they were bought out by Comcrap...errr, Comcast and let me tell you, the service is night & day different. It took them two weeks just to call me back to tell me if I could even get service in my subdivision that's at least 6 years old and I have friends down the street with their service. Then trying to get my own cable modem (which was the exact same model as the ones they hand out at the store front) I couldn't even get it online, for at least 4 weeks now....and I go get one of theirs, and it doesn't work about 90% of the time because the tech that came out initially didn't balance the connection or check for interference.

I have been transferred to every department & it never got resolved....I've went thru a few thousand 'roll over' minutes I had stored up on my cell phone....(i don't have a land line) so yes, it's VERY frustrating having to call back & get some NEW moron & having to spend countless amounts of time RE-explaining the situation because they are not adept enough to escalate you to someone that CAN fix the damn problem or at least have someone contact you that can.

I don't know HOW the hell they stay in business with the crappy customer service they have.

It's a shame that you have to do something that will put you in prison in order to get Comcast to listen to you.

I am sure they covered their tracks pretty well before doing this. No doubt they will eventually be caught but i have a feeling it will be from them boasting all over the net instead of a trace of the IP address where the attack originated.

I'm a victim of the damn corporations!

Seriously, as a consumer, you get to choose who gets your money. Food, fuel, insurance, mortgage rates, and utility costs aside, YOU determine how much money you GIVE to these "evil corporations".

Why is everyone a victim?

Actually they appear to have done it without any real thought to the consequences. No real covering of the tracks at all. Fortunately they were only trying to piss off comcast. They could have very easily created a massive security breach in the comcast system [proxy servers, collecting information, trojan installs]. Comcast and basically anyone who uses network solutions dodged a bullet on this one.

i am with you TK, and people wonder why comcast has such a bad name. There are plenty of people out there that could not access there email or the comcast.net home page and all they know is that comcast's having problems again not knowing that some morons were hacking the site.

I have. They did quite well unf**cking the issue.
Modem snafu and ARRIS not being able to cope with Blast.
They sorted it out and I fly.
Ask anyone here!

So, because you or someone else has an issue or a bad experience, doesn't mean we all will.

This "hacker" needs mommy to slap him.
I hope he does time with Bubba!

Last time I checked 2 wrongs don't make a right.

Didn't affect me.
So where does the "all" come into play?

It's either that, or take an ax down to the local office.

You know the old saying about training a mule... first you hit it as hard as you can with a 2x4; that's to get its attention.

They aren't all that bright...they've already let slip that they have Comcast service, which narrows it down quite a bit (I suppose they might be former customers but people who've already left don't get this pissed off at the company).

Plus, they've revealed they called this engineer guy. How hard do you think it will be to track down where that call originated from?

Edit: These guys are dumber than I thought. The Wired News article has a picture of one of them hitting a bong.

I suppose they could be truly devious—maybe they're disgruntled 'torrenters from Sweden who have never had Comcast services, know their way around the PSTN well enough to disguise their tracks and set up fake MySpace profiles all as part of an elaborate ruse. I think it's far more likely that they are dumb kids who happen to know a thing or two about DNS.

I'm not justifying what the kid did, interfering with everyone else's service is in no way the right thing to do, but rather I know how insane dealing with inept customer service people can make you feel. They have been driving me batty! Do I want to throw my comcast devices into the street & run them over with my Jeep? Yes! Do I want to make everyone else as mad as me by interrupting their service? No.

Shouldn't be too difficult if the kid actually did call the Comcast tech rep at his house regarding the domain transfer.

If it's okay for an old bat to come into a lobbby with a hammer then it's okay for someone to deface the website. Unfortunately customers were affected for a very short time.

An irrational response to an irrational situation is still irrational. The mature thing to do would be to cancel service. As it stands, this young man simply committed a federal crime trying to make his point. In the process, he contributed to the very problem that drive him to commit the crime.

How's that for stupid?

Me too. I had a few irate, cussing, "were losing 10 billion dollars a second" customers that were mad as hell because a couple of "important" emails were bounced during this.

"Another thing they could have done was just cancel service."

WHY DON'T YOU PEOPLE GET IT!

In most of the country nobody can just cancel service. ISP's are a monopoly just about everywhere. There is one count 'em ONE broadband provider for whatever area in which they live. So therefore we have to hope, beg and plead for the one choice we have to offer us what we want or need from an ISP.

So, you absolutely need broadband Internet access? Then you'd better get used to dealing with the terms of use put forth by companies like Comcast. As long as you need their service then you'll have to abide by the terms of what's available.

Or you could decide you don't need broadband and cancel your service.

He can look on the bright side, he won't be a Comcast customer for very long!

In this day and age the Internet has pretty much become a necessity and dial-up doesn't cut it. If you tell people to cancel their Internet access, you might as well also tell them to cancel their phone and power service as well.

Funny how when a private citizen does something like this you want to lock them up and throw away the key yet when a corporation does this, you want to give a free pass to them.

+1!

Yock isn't seeing that we are getting ripped off by not getting what we are being paid for. Sure we can cancel, but where's the refund of our money spent on service that never delivered what was advertised?

Road Runner was able to deliver what they advertised & give adequate customer support & service, Comcast could do it if they'd reach behind them & pull their heads out of their arses. Luckily, I do have a few other choices for my connection, not that all of them would work as well as Comcast IF they actually got it to work as it should!

I've got to agree. It isn't like the kids were messing around and accidentally got Comcast's DNS transferred to them. They:

1. Saw a vulnerability
2. Actively exploited it to gain control of 200 Comcast domain names
3. Watched as the domain was transferred back to Comcast
4. Exploited the vulnerability to gain control of the domain names for a second time
5. Reported the situation to Comcast
and, when the manager (called at home, no less) laughed at those kids on the phone claiming to have taken control of the Comcast domain name,
6. Decided to hurt Comcast to soothe their anger by redirecting the domain names to a server under the hackers' control

The background given on the kids is interesting. Both have been arrested before. One even thought he would be arrested this time so he slept in his clothes. (Apparently, last time he was sleeping nude or something. Talk about TMI!) They are both high school dropouts. "Defiant" apparently "assaulted" his school's resource office after being caught in the possession of narcotics. Real mature reaction there, but pretty much seems in line with his reaction to the Comcast manager.

They even don't seem remorseful for what they've done. Yes, they seem to fear jail time a bit, but when asked whether they would attack anyone else in a similar manner, they responded "Who knows. Only Kryogeniks [their hacking group] knows." Plus the article described them as going "freely between jubilant excitement over the impact of their attack, and fatalism that they would soon be arrested for it." That doesn't sound like anything close to remorse for doing something that financially impacted thousands if not millions of people.

These kids deserve a little lesson in Real Life. Namely that actions have consequences and if you take something from someone, you *will* be punished for it no matter how much you claim it was in retaliation for poor service.

Why is it a necessity? I can still buy groceries, order any pay for services, get medical treatment, buy real estate and real property, and anything else separate from the Internet.

Explain to me what you must do on the Internet that you cannot accomplish any other way.