RSSComcast.net hacked, DNS servers changed
By Ed Oswald | Published May 29, 2008, 6:31 PM
Visitors to Comcast's Internet portal were greeted with a cryptic message for several hours overnight Thursday.
Checks by BetaNews indicated that the problems as a result of the hack were continuing even into Thursday afternoon, including problems with accessing Web-based e-mail and the company's support forums.
Officials say that a hacker likely broke into the company's Network Solutions account and changed the contact information and DNS entries. This caused the site to behave erratically, and redirected visitors to IPs other than Comcast's own servers.
The message that greeted users was the following: "KRYOGENIKS Defiant and EBK RoXed Comcast sHouTz to VIRUS Warlock elul21 coll1er seven."
While initial concerns spread across the Internet on several forums that the hackers might have broken into the e-mail system and had obtained access to username and password information, the company that has become one of the US' leading CATV providers and ISPs says it believes that was not the case.
Law enforcement officials have been notified, and Comcast said it was working with them to track down those responsible.
Yeah but this illegal act, which is easily done from a computer, which hurts noone physically, (while comcast charges insane prices for it's HD service which is only like 30 channels and cuts it's HD signal into downgraded HD which is criminal in itself) gets probably almost as much years in prison or even more than manslaughter.
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|yea but you have to catch them first and there is all those international treaties that you got to deal with. this is only the beginning.
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|:) Just shows that while a simple hack what can be done with time, money, and patience. The sad part is that FBI couldn't diagnose their way out of a bag and this is the agency you rely on to provide security. Live in your dream world while other countries race to see what to damage and how easy it is in the next war. This doesn't even take into account the stuoidity of your Admirals that leave laptops unattended for the Chinese to gain info.
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|Isn't anyone upset that their information might have been compromised? Shouldn't this raise concerns about the security of our ISP?
No illegal act should be commended even though you don't agree with them.
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|So civil disobedience is a bad thing? Yikes. Kids these days...
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|???
What has Civil Disobedience got to do with this?
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|Civil Disobedience is generally considered an illegal act. He is claiming all illegal acts should be shunned.
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|Well, considering the person doing it is generally prosecuted, yeah, it's not what most folks would consider a good thing.
It certainly shouldn't be anything someone *wants* to do.
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|Thanks to everyone that made this possible. (You know who you are)
The community has had enough of Comcast's complete bulls*** policies and underhanded business practices.
You (Comcast) have screwed customers long enough. How does it feel when it happens to you?
Comcast = clueless morons
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|clueless morons with billions in profits. Yeah, what does that make their customers?
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|now Comcast knows what it is like to get raped by someone... they've been doing it to customers for years. Good just 12yr old Starbucks hacker boy. You have our support :)
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|About time someone took them down a notch.
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|Comcast hacked:-) LMAO
It was probably some kid sitting at a Starbucks sipping a Frappuccino.
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|Yeah track down the poor kids multibillion dollar company.
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|Speaking as someone who knows something about this kind of stuff....
This is not a hack at all. It is a crack. RTFA! The only thing that happened is that the guy/gal at comcast who has to pay the yearly bill to NSI used a BS password and someone figured it out. They logged in and pointed the site to a nameserver other than comcast's.
Nobody was affected except for the old lady who couldn't check her email b/c her comcast portal didn't load.
If it you makes you feel better I am sure that they used some free dns service provider to hide their tracks. And, yes they are stupid to do this but...
...Move along nothing to see here.
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|You might be giving alot of credit to the Comcast folks to have their system isolated.. etc..
But I would suspect that these crackers/hackers would have 0wned this portal for some time now and got bored with it so they gave it up by defacing it..
Comcast IT is too busy looking at customers emails and web traffic to care about keeping customer facing sites updated and protected..
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|HA HA!
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|Idiots... What a way to draw attention to yourselves as hackers. Piss off the largest customer base of ISP Users in the US. DUMB!.
While i laugh at a simple DNS hack, I also want to provide a quickie solution for those customers unjustly affected. Just use the Free OPENDNS as your backup DNS listing in your routers...
http://www.opendns.com/
I have been on it now for years, and I have yet to be brought down when others on my ISP have been calling me saying the official ISP DNS was down and they could not seem to do anything online... Has defiantly been a god send for me... I highly recommend it to anyone on Comcast that is still having DNS resolution issues.
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|Amazing that you have "been on it for years" since they have not yet turned 2 years old.
However, this openDNS looks very interesting since I see a lot of DNS error-based problems.
Thanks for the heads up.
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|Opendns ain't all that. I've seen it not catch malicious sites that should have been in its cache, and its redirect service is dog slow, enough to annoy on mistypes of domain names.
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|It may not be the speed and effortlessness of an ISP DNS, but it's a damn sight better than not being able to get online due to Comcast's DNS issues.
Yes, this may not have been their fault, but they are notorious for their DNS outages.
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|Whereas I just use UUNet's DNS as my backup, as they tend to be sort of reliable. Being part of the backbone and all that. ;) Enjoy oDNS though. :) Let me know how that works and I might recommend it to others. Heh.
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|Yeah thats it, lets blame it on network Solutions and not their own servers. Couldnt have anything to do with Comcast now could it LOL
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