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FBI Hunts for Comcast Hackers
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Tom Corelis / DailyTech
June 02, 2008
‘Defiant of Kryogeniks: We Warned Comcast First.’ -
Kryogeniks’ Defiant and EBK say it’s only a matter of time before the FBI catches up with them, speaking to Wired Threat Level in a Thursday phone interview.
The FBI is working hard to make good on the duo’s fears, and announced a joint investigation with the San Jose police department on Friday, to try and track down the culprits responsible for a Wednesday attack against Comcast’s subscriber portal.
Both Defiant and EBK are members of the hacking group Kryogeniks, who in the past was implicated in attacks against AOL and a number of celebrities. The duo said that their attack against Comcast began Tuesday, when they employed a combination of social engineering and an exploit in Network Solutions’ control panel to gain access to Comcast’s domain settings.
The pair said they made minor changes to Comcast’s DNS records before full Wednesday attack, which Comcast quickly reverted. When they attempted to reach Comcast’s technical contact afterwards, they described being told off and then hung up on.
“If he wasn’t such a prick, he could have avoided all of that,” said EBK. “I wasn’t even really thinking. Plus, I’m just so mad at Comcast. I’m tired of their shitty service. Comcast is just a huge corporation, and we wanted to take them out, and we did,” he said.
Defiant says that he was reluctant to attack Comcast, but once the hack was done, “it was, like, **** it.”
Wired notes that the pair stayed up all night opening new webhosting accounts in order to accommodate the massive influx of Comcast subscribers attempting to visit the portal. In the end, said EBK, it took over 50 different hosts to keep the defacement running.
“You know how hard it is to find hosting handling that kind of traffic?” asked EBK. “The first one [went down] in two minutes.”
Both hackers described getting little sleep Wednesday night, as the attack started at 11:00 P.M. and lasted until approximately 4 or 5 A.M.
Despite the duo’s expectation of impending doom, thus far the FBI has announced no arrests.
“I wish I was a minor right now,” said the 19-year-old Defiant, “because this is going to be really bad.”
© 2008, DailyTech
czar
about 1 year ago
252 comments
When cable internet first came out, a lot of us said they won’t be able to sustain the bandwidth, those down the line will get less if those above take more.
When I first got it was great, so much better than the ISDN I had at the time. Last year when my neighborhood went from 2 of us to everyone (I can see 16 different wireless signals) I started having problems with bandwidth, staying connected for large uploads and downloads, which I did mostly late at night. (I do high-end flash and video websites)
I complained to Comcast (we have nicknamed it CONcast round here). That I wasn’t getting the bandwidth and of all the drops, they said it was my equipment. When I started having troubles with the TV also, again it was my equipment. I showed technicians on their OWN test equipment how the signal, and strength would vary dramatically, they only replied “that’s normal, happens all the time”. Eventually Comcast fired me as a customer, just shut me OFF said they didn’t want my business, they knew I knew they were ripping people off.
A few months ago they started charging for a tech to come out and you pay EVEN if it is Comcast’s fault and not yours and it isn’t cheap.
This is another ploy to gouge more money out of the consumer. I understand profit, this is different it’s that they have lost market share through bad customer service to other companies. So instead of fixing their problems they will just charge more for less.
Like the commercial says “most people wouldn’t know HD if it climbed in their lay and called them mama.” They think we are ALL STUPID.
haroknem
about 1 year ago
2 comments
I've had comcast here in Dallas and in Nacogdoches when I lived there two years ago. I think Comcast deserves it. I had so many problems with jut trying to get someone on the phone. I've been hung up on countless times, not even getting someone before my calls dropped by their inside telephony system, and have actually been told never to call tech support again if I had a problem and that I should be able to figure it out on my own. IT'S rediculous! The only way I was able to ahold of anyone inside Comcast was by tapping their tele-database and getting the direct extensions to high office managers.