Comcast Briefly Loses Control of Its Domain Name 222
Fallen Andy notes that Comcast, one of the largest US ISPs, lost control of its domain name to what appeared to be juvenile social engineers of the old school — i.e. not in it for the money. The intruders got into Comcast's registrar account at Network Solutions and repointed the domain's DNS records. A blog entry at SANS points out how trivially easy this can be. Reader ElvenKnight points out an insightful interview up at Wired with the two young guys who perpetrated the hack.
The consequences might not be as fun (Score:5, Insightful)
How much do you bet the feds will come down hard on the kids and charge then with felony, cyber-"terrorism" or some other preposterous computer crime? I used to do harmless hacks for fun in years past, but these days it's not really wise.
Re:The consequences might not be as fun (Score:5, Insightful)
That was hardly a "harmless hack". There is a lot of money tied to that domain and when it's down, it's a serious problem for a lot of people. That said, I agree that charging them as cyber-terrorists would be severe overkill.
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Re:The consequences might not be as fun (Score:5, Interesting)
Oh, really? You were there? You know what they were thinking? How do you know it wasn't a couple of punk kids just screwing around and not realizing what they were getting themselves into?
I never said they shouldn't be charged. I (and the parent I responded to) both just said that they will likely be charged with much more than the crime warrants.
Re:The consequences might not be as fun (Score:4, Insightful)
These kids used social engineering to deliberately steal the domain name of one of the largest ISPs in the nation. This isn't equivalent to a kid stumbling across a XSS or SQL injection attack in some web app.
Re:The consequences might not be as fun (Score:5, Insightful)
These kids used social engineering to deliberately steal the domain name of one of the largest ISPs in the nation. This isn't equivalent to a kid stumbling across a XSS or SQL injection attack in some web app.
We base our economy upon something this fragile, and then when someone points it out we come down on them really hard.
Imagine if a real attack takes place?
They should thank the kids, ask them not to do it again, and takes steps to prevent it from happening again.
But will that happen - don't make me laugh.
It's like the rest of the U.S. phoney as can be when it comes to real domestic security.
Re:The consequences might not be as fun (Score:4, Insightful)
As it was, they inconvenienced tens of thousands of people. And they didn't put up a sign that said
"We have briefly changed this page to point out a serious flaw in the security of this system. Sorry for the inconvenience.
it said:
"KRYOGENICS Defiant and EBK RoXed Comcast
sHouTz to VIRUS Warlock elul21 coll1er seven"
yes, very helpful.
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It was a terrorist attack intended to disrupt a major part of the infrastructure, period.
Oh, really? You were there? You know what they were thinking? How do you know it wasn't a couple of punk kids just screwing around and not realizing what they were getting themselves into?
I never said they shouldn't be charged. I (and the parent I responded to) both just said that they will likely be charged with much more than the crime warrants.
The Wired article indicates that they were retaliating because some Comcast dweeb was rude on the phone. It also indicates that they were stupid enough to be surprised by how big and loud this blew up. Further, it indicates this is a repeat offense for both "hackers". If all that is true, then I submit there is very little chance they are going to be charged with more than the crimes warrant. Repeat offenders and that kind of petty extortion should be slapped as hard as possible.
Re:The consequences might not be as fun (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not an excuse and that's why they should be charged with something. However, intent is a huge factor when determining what to charge someone with. For example, it's the difference between first degree murder and involuntary manslaughter. Either way, someone's dead, but one crime involves a possible death penalty for the perpetrator.
Re:The consequences might not be as fun (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:The consequences might not be as fun (Score:5, Funny)
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Blowing your nose in public threatens to spread pathogens to innocent bystanders, too.
Ubuwalker's 6 pronged guide to terrorism (Score:5, Interesting)
This is why I developed:
Ubuwalker's 6 pronged guide to determining if a person or entity is a terrorist:
1) Did they intend to cause mass terror? [This is an objective test; just because something is scary, doesn't make it terrorism.]
2) Did they use violence or threat of violence? [This rules out non-violent protesters, but includes activities related to violence, like arson]
3) Did they deliberately (and routinely) target non-combatant civilians? [Actions that target military personnel aren't terrorism. An entity which is involved in isolated and infrequent acts which meet criteria 1-6 are more characteristic of war crimes, rather than terrorism, as they might be revenge attacks or guerrilla attacks of opportunity, or of splinter cells, or accidental engagements of civilian target, or engagements of legitimate military targets where civilian combatant are killed, and thus would not be indicative of a systematic policy of engaging in terrorism]
4) Are they a non-governmental organization? [otherwise the action is a war-crime or crime against humanity or piracy or the actor is a State Sponsor of Terrorism]
5) Did they have a political goal? [This rules out ordinary criminals and vandals and street thugs and normal military action]
6) Do they disguise themselves or pretend that they are ordinary civilians? [This goes to the fundamentally unlawful nature of terrorism, by not acting under the color of the laws of war or international law, and thereby putting civilians at risk of attack or collateral damage]
If you don't meet all of these criteria, or find yourself arguing that a group doesn't meet a prong, then you might be dealing with something other than terrorism. Like Piracy (missing prong 5), ordinary military action (lacking 3 and 4 and 6), covert government operations (lacking 4), war crimes (lacking 4), paramilitary/freedom fighters/insurgents (lacking 1, 3).
A State Sponsor of Terrorism provides support to non-governmental entities engaged in terrorist activities. It is fair to say that a leader who supports terrorism is himself a terrorist, sort of like how its fair to say an accessory to murder is a murderer. However, deliberately targeting civilians/ethnic cleansing/genocide is a war crime, and calling war criminals terrorists just confuses the issue.
Hackers and script kiddies are just ordinary criminals. If Al Queda launched a cyber attack to knock out a hospitals computer infrastructure, that would be terrorism.
Re:The consequences might not be as fun (Score:5, Funny)
Re:The consequences might not be as fun (Score:5, Insightful)
Okaaaaaayyyy.... So tell us who was 'terrified', and what was it that 'terrified' them?
Re:The consequences might not be as fun (Score:5, Insightful)
Pollution
2girls1cup
Enron
goatse.cx
PATRIOT Act
DMCA
The Pirate Bay
Incredible. We can call almost anything terrorism now! Thank you!
Re:The consequences might not be as fun (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The consequences might not be as fun (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The consequences might not be as fun (Score:5, Funny)
Just the other day, I had a fast food burger, and the terrorists left out the pickle. Then I went to get gas, but the pump had been broken by terrorists. After finally getting gas, I discovered the terrorists have been jacking up fuel prices so I didn't have enough cash. The terrorists must have been disrupting the banking system, because it took several minutes to access my funds by debit card. The terrorists had been messing with the stop lights as well, since they were completely out of sync.
Finally, I got home and discovered my wife must be a terrorist, since she overcooked the roast. Then I tried watching the news, but terrorists kept interrupting it with ads for things I didn't want to buy. Disillusioned, I decided to go throw a ball around with my son Billy. It's one of the few pleasures I can still find in this dangerous, terror-infested world. You wouldn't believe what happened! My son threw the ball badly, and I got a grass stain on my slacks when diving for it. I'm afraid I'll have to call DHS and get them to start a dossier on Billy now.
I hope the terrorists don't turn off my alarm clock in the night again. If I'm late for one more day of work, I'm pretty sure the terrorists in human resources are going to fire me.
Re:The consequences might not be as fun (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The consequences might not be as fun (Score:5, Funny)
Excuse me while I listen to Barry Goldwater rolling in his grave.
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Re:The consequences might not be as fun (Score:4, Funny)
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Terrorism, by definition, has to have some sort of political goal in mind (wanting power, autonomy, etc), and has to have the intention of intimidation. This has neither.
I don't see anyone shaking in fear over Comcast's website being inaccessible...
It's just a regular crime, not terrorism.
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Unfortunately, being assholes is not a crime.
Oh, wait. That cuts both ways in this case, huh?
Re:The consequences might not be as fun (Score:5, Insightful)
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That seem fair to you?
Re:The consequences might not be as fun (Score:4, Insightful)
Hopefully the judicial system will dish out the appropriate punishment and won't get caught up in the hype. I wouldn't hold my breath, though.
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Well, yeah. Saying that the effect of tagging an abandoned warehouse is the same as the effect of tagging the Washington Monument is like saying the cost of denting a rusted out Geo Metro is the same as the cost of denting a brand new Ferrari.
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Yeah, and which one is more likely to actually get life in prison? Unless the murder
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Re:The consequences might not be as fun (Score:4, Interesting)
Since always, basically. The prime example would be theft, which has always been both a misdemeanor or a felony, depending on how much is stolen.
With crimes against persons, any monetary impact is considered so secondary as to not be worthy of consideration, generally (a few centuries back, this wasn't the case; in medieval law, if you murdered somebody rich and important, the penalty was indeed greater than if you murdered a serf). With crimes against property, the monetary impact is basically the point. This was a crime against property.
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The Washington Monument is a highly visible, highly valuable, historic landmark and if you deface it it affects a lot more people.
I don't know about anyone else, but your analogy just made it easier for me to see fault in these kids' actions.
Re:The consequences might not be as fun (Score:5, Interesting)
I think they've figured that out... now. From the Wired interview:
They claim they called Comcast's technical contact and told him they'd taken control of the domain, BEFORE they changed anything. I don't know if it'll help them in court, but it sounds like if he hadn't blown them off, it really would have been a harmless prank. That doesn't justify their decision to redirect, but the Comcast guy should have at least bothered to check.
After they were blown off by him, these punks lost their tempers:
"I was trying to say we shouldn't do this the whole damn time," says Defiant.
"But once we were in," adds EBK, "it was, like, fuck it."
Well, I hope they had fun, because they're going to be paying for it, big time.
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It probably won't help them, but it certainly help anyone who might have been harmed - as a subscriber or a shareholder - and wants to sue Comcast for negligence...
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Sure it wasn't deliberate, or is it just my zany English sense of humour?
Re:The consequences might not be as fun (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:The consequences might not be as fun (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:The consequences might not be as fun (Score:4, Informative)
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I wouldn't lay money on that scenario mind you, but it is possible.
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They were using bunches of free webhosts who almost definitely have servers listening on imap/pop3/smtp and other services. That said, it makes sense that logins intended for comcast ended up failing when they hit these random web hosts.
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harvested logins of customers.
FTFA:
Fellow hackers, relying on press reports claiming that customer data may have been compromised, are hitting up the duo for passwords to Comcast e-mail accounts, which they say they don't have. "Nobody was listening in on the ports to try and get usernames and password," says Defiant. "We could have, but we didn't." (On this point, Comcast and the hackers agree).
You have to consider the sources here; both sides have something to lose by claiming usernames and passwords were stolen. If the boys admit to stealing accounts, they're looking at a harsher sentence when this all comes crashing down. If Comcast admits accounts could have been compromised in this attack, they are facing a rather nasty security-related PR problem.
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That's not what I said. Let me spell it out -- being an adult is not something that occur at a fixed, predetermined date in your life. This begins at around the time that you truly realize that your actions have a direct effect on other people; and that other people have an existence independent of and outside of your own.
For some people, that can happen in their early teens. For most people, it's sometime in their late twenties. You can tell when it happens by conversing with people - when the conve
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Network Solutions seems to be the common trend. (Score:5, Interesting)
Perhaps it's a sign of a more underlying flaw in Network Solutions' security?
Everything old is new again. (Score:5, Interesting)
The best part: Network Solutions were of absolutely no help to us in getting our own domain back from the hijackers, so we ended up having to use the same trick to just steal it back again. Three times.
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And from what was said by the admin team at SA, Network Solutions wasn't any help to them at all, either. Funny, that.
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Re:Network Solutions seems to be the common trend. (Score:5, Informative)
From the Wired article:
Sooo, what she's saying is that Network Solutions' system was operating as designed. Is that supposed to be comforting?
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These guys are my heroes (Score:5, Funny)
Now *THAT'S* hacking.
Re:These guys are my heroes (Score:5, Informative)
Lazy companies create "automated systems to handle most inquiries" ignoring the fact that even their claim states its own failing, it doesn't handle them all. So we have created a database of how to circumvent the barrier to customer support.
Now if only we could force them to hire customer support grunts without such thick accents.
Re:These guys are my heroes (Score:5, Funny)
Comcast: OMG!!! Outrageous!!! Some HACKERS denied us access to our OWN DOMAIN NAME!!!! Get them!!!!
FBI: Why? They didn't take anything that belongs to you.
Comcast: What??? Out contract with ICANN gives us unlimited access to the Comcast domain!
FBI: Right. And what does unlimited mean?
Comcast: Look, it's right here in Websters: "without any
FBI: No, no, not that one, use your own internal glossary.
Comcast: Okay then, "unlimited: "
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My company outsources its overflow support calls, a decision I've been contesting since they made it.
I know who did it... (Score:5, Funny)
Stupid password (Score:3, Funny)
Right.... it was probably 1234 (same as most slashdotter's luggage)
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12345.
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Thats just sad.... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Thats just sad.... (Score:5, Insightful)
If Comcast had sense... (Score:3, Interesting)
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If Comcast has any sense they will try to hire the guys rather than drag them through the courts. We need people like this looking for and fixing flaws rather than exploiting them.
I couldn't disagree with you more. From reading the Wired article, it seems that these guys are just a bunch of scrip kiddies who got lucky. If Wired managed to track them down so quickly (through MySpace no less) than anyone can, including the FBI. If these guys were hired by Comcast they would spend their days getting paid to smoke their bongs, and nothing more. Comcast should be extremely embarrassed to be hacked by these two clowns.
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Re:If Comcast had sense... (Score:4, Insightful)
I have discovered that I can throw bricks through windows. But strangely, no glass manufacturers want to hire me to give them advice on the specifics of engineering brick-proof glass.
5 hours of downtime? (Score:2)
Karma (Score:2)
What about Network Solutions liability (Score:4, Insightful)
Comcast's response proves they deserved it (Score:2)
These guys are either total idiots for getting themselves in a lot of trouble with no gain for themselves or they are lying. Comcast, on the other hand, clearly has no way of knowing if customer information was compromise. They're relying on the word of two criminals who clearly don't like the company. Comcast's agreement in the state
Re:Expiring domains (Score:5, Interesting)
Apparently, according to the linked articles, they pulled it off twice, too. This wasn't a case of "oh sweet, that's not registered anymore, yoink", it was a case of actual wresting of control.
The question is if the weakness in security lies with Comcast (i.e. a weak password for the panel) or Network Solutions (i.e. weakness in their portal, weak transmission of passwords, etc).
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What about all the customers who got screwed? No access to email etc, the hassle of sitting on the phone with tech support trying to figure out why nothing works. Comcast didn't lose much but a huge number of people were quite seriously inconvenienced, all for no good reason.
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But they won't let me take a bong into the library.
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Better yet, they should have redirected it to BitTorrent.com, or piratebay.
No, they actually were smart not to do that.
Say these kids did just that. Now the question is, why did they do that? Were they told to do that? Are they working with or for Piratebay or Bittorrent?
Given the current torrent (...that was an unfortunate rhyme, I apologize) situation, even trying to associate this event with either of the aforementioned sites would have benefited no one except Comcast.
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I'm just glad it was some annoyed stoners instead of Russian mafia identity thieves with look-alike counterfeit Comcast servers. Imagine the frickin' chaos then.
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Just called Comcast and my phone number didn't register..had account for 7 years with same number and the CSR insisted that I wasn't a customer. After putting me on hold for 10 minutes she said that the "internet just went down" and that until it comes back up I cannot access email. I told her that the internet was fine, just the comcast.net site.
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They lied about who they were. network solutions gave them access.
as far as I can see, all they did was lie. is that against the law?
network solutions should be held accountable.