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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.”



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Overreacting
By niks on 5/31/2008 11:44:52 AM , Rating: 5
The 'victims' lost email access for one night, they didn't even lose any emails. Everybody's email goes down every now and then.

What they did was pretty stupid, but the way they did it was very clever. Plus, they didn't destroy anything or take any personal information, just created an inconvenience. I say, let's get more people to screw with Comcast. They have screwed with their customers, let's turn the tables.




RE: Overreacting
By B3an on 5/31/2008 12:47:20 PM , Rating: 3
I agree.

Whats with all the corporate ass licking on here? it was just a little inconvenience to customers, and Comcast deserved it.


RE: Overreacting
By B3an on 5/31/2008 12:47:37 PM , Rating: 1
I agree.

Whats with all the corporate ass licking on here? it was just a little inconvenience to customers, and Comcast deserved it.


RE: Overreacting
By Kwai Noi on 5/31/08, Rating: 0
RE: Overreacting
By enlil242 on 5/31/2008 1:19:02 PM , Rating: 5
I pretty much agree with what you stated in all but the last sentance. That was just a jerkoff thing to say and its offensive. Name one instance where a non-white hacker got a harsher sentance than a white one? Think before you post that sh1t...


RE: Overreacting
By daftrok on 5/31/2008 2:47:24 PM , Rating: 4
Following your logic if the FBI is after them then they can't possibly be rich and/or white. Right? Cuz the FBI only goes after darkies?


RE: Overreacting
By Cobra Commander on 5/31/2008 7:23:22 PM , Rating: 3
You underestimate The Empire if you think Comcast isn't going to come full strength at these guys.


RE: Overreacting
By larson0699 on 6/1/2008 1:40:50 AM , Rating: 1
I hope you're not serious here.

This is an example of idiocy in the world: If A, then certainly B. Hint: Don't follow his logic. He'll get the nod for the 0day after some prison time and fines; you'll get pissed on by everyone whose coffee you poisoned, whose oh-so-lovely Best Buy shopping experience you ruined (hey, they're still customers) and whose tires you deflated. I'd pay to see you try.

You cannot possibly, logically take one guy's apples and make oranges of them. Now please, you've wasted 987 bytes on this server already. Any more of your fallacies and you will surely DoS DT (A) which is certainly not Comcast (B).

For the record, they (to be read "any oversized, oversupported, unjustified, and unfair large corporation") deserve what they get (though in the end no lessons are learned). No sympathy for ISP email users. Get real.

Nothing hurts worse than losing business, and even there someone's gotta set the precedent. In the advent of the wireless age (or whatever's beyond cable) few will remain overpaying. They won't last forever.


RE: Overreacting
By artemicion on 6/1/2008 11:50:37 PM , Rating: 1
Good grief, is it just me, or is everybody else having a difficult time making sense of this gibberish?

It's just phenomenally amazing to me that so many people cheer for this kind of juvenile stuff. I mean, I hate Comcast too, but what's the point of this attack? To piss off the end users into switching ISPs? Which kind of runs against the assertion that "oh they just lost email access for a little while, it's not a big deal."

And boy, call me a prude but I think there is some serious public policy problems with just being "ok" with people putting justice in their own hands by attacking large corporations that piss them off. I mean, someone tell me - what makes it ok? Because Comcast is a "large" corporation? - exactly how "big" does a corporation have to be to justify vigilante justice? Because Comcast pisses people off? - because NYC cab drivers piss me off, what can I do to them? Because the attack was of little consequence? I suppose it's YOU we should consult to judge whether any given attack is significant enough to prosecute. You know, let's just ignore the standards set by law by our democratically elected legislators. Then again all you counter-culture pro-hacker types would probably accuse those legislators of being elected by "the man" that runs Comcast, so maybe we should just march on Washington and revolt.


RE: Overreacting
By mikeyD95125 on 6/2/2008 12:23:35 AM , Rating: 3
Maybe not revolt but we should do something. I'm fucking sick of the legislators whose job it is to represent us instead representing their own or corporate interests.

When I hear of a legislator or senator dying and I look at their record and see it full of lobbyists and self-serving actions, its good-riddance to me.


RE: Overreacting
By Reclaimer77 on 6/2/2008 1:34:37 AM , Rating: 2
quote:
When I hear of a legislator or senator dying and I look at their record and see it full of lobbyists and self-serving actions, its good-riddance to me.


Ditto.

I hear Ted Kennedy ain't doing so hot these days. One can only hope....


RE: Overreacting
By larson0699 on 6/3/2008 3:50:25 AM , Rating: 1
... I know I'm going negative with this one, but not without some merit.

How the fuck does it hurt you? Are you a subscriber? A stockholder? An employee or some kind of fucking advocate? Isn't it more palatable to screw with big business than some group of private citizens? WTF do you honestly get out of it if some bullish monopoly (in many areas) gets a nice stream of D/DoS's... I thought so. NOTHING. Your world spins just as backwards as theirs.

Vigilante bullsh.... Get off the stage. Don't dumbly ask the thresholds of the big players versus small; those lines are well defined. Greedy telecoms don't deserve the support they get. It's unfortunate that so many are either pressed or ill-informed to rely on them, but then there's just a sucker for everything. I wouldn't have to be the one to get loud and start vandalizing, but knowing that that takes place doesn't ruin my day, either.

Don't even try to bring the law, either. Even when our security is compromised at an alarming level they hardly do jack about it.

But since you give me your vote of confidence in judging matters, I'll gladly take it!

Tool.


RE: Overreacting
By Kenenniah on 6/4/2008 6:41:36 PM , Rating: 2
quote:
Isn't it more palatable to screw with big business than some group of private citizens?


What do you think a corporation is? (Hint, it's a group of private citizens). Yes you are screwing with a "Big Business", but that business is made up of thousands of normal everyday people just trying to earn a living. Not to mention all the normal people that are shareholders of corporations. If everyone that is so down on "Big Business" had their way, what position do you think the average Joe would be in? Hmm, if all our greedy evil big corporations were to die, EVERYONE would be in a very very bad state economically. Let's face it, companies trying to make money are precisely what drives our economy.

So to bottom line it for you....it most certainly does affect other people. Don't be so narrow mindedly focusing on the "evilness" that you forget these corporations are also relied upon by many who are just making an honest living.


RE: Overreacting
By cparka23 on 5/31/2008 1:20:48 PM , Rating: 1
The "victims" didn't even lose email access. They lost webmail access. These kids should just come clean, then get a slap on the wrist.

Sure, people who aren't great with computers would probably go with webmail, but this apparently didn't affect anyone using an email client. And since this was between 11PM and 5AM, this probably affected fewer subscribers than what they could have done.

And yes, Comcast does suck. I don't think anyone is disputing that here... minus the one commentor who hasn't had a problem yet.


RE: Overreacting
By chrisg22 on 5/31/2008 5:36:20 PM , Rating: 3
I have comcast, and I DID lose email access. I could check my mail in outlook, but guess what? whenever anyone tried to send any mail to me they get a returned mail error with the error described as a DNS problem.

So, you are wrong. I lost email access from a 6:00am until at least 11:00pm when I went to bed. 11:00pm to 5:00am? haha yeah right.


RE: Overreacting
By rhuarch on 6/2/2008 11:17:56 AM , Rating: 2
Well, if your email problem didn't occur within the timeframe of the attack then it is probably just another example of how much Comcast sucks. It sounds to me like these kids could just say, "we're not even sure our hack was successful because comcast goes down so often we can't be sure that it wasn't just a coincidence."


RE: Overreacting
By Nik00117 on 6/2/2008 3:44:23 PM , Rating: 3
That'd be a funny difference

Judge: Did your clients hack aganist comast do any damage?
Lawyer: Prob not, I mean comcast service is down so much anyhow how should we know if it was our fault or theres
Judge: So your saying that this could just be condience that two skript kiddies started up right as the e-mail went down?
Lawyer: yes
Judge: Ok case dissmissed


RE: Overreacting
By Reclaimer77 on 5/31/2008 7:16:59 PM , Rating: 1
quote:
Sure, people who aren't great with computers would probably go with webmail,


I am " great " with computers, which is exactly why I ONLY use webmail. Why download a bunch of potentially malicious e-mails into my machine when I can just browse all my mail though the safety of my web browser ?


RE: Overreacting
By lexluthermiester on 5/31/2008 8:47:34 PM , Rating: 5
quote:
I am " great " with computers


LOL, sure you are...

quote:
which is exactly why I ONLY use webmail. Why download a bunch of potentially malicious e-mails into my machine when I can just browse all my mail though the safety of my web browser ?


Ya know Reclaimer77, you have made some bonehead posts, but here like a crack of thunder out of the clear blue, you post something that is lucid and logical. What the frak? Get a flash of inspiration? Of course, if you say you use IE as your web browser it will suddenly make sense...


RE: Overreacting
By Frallan on 6/1/2008 5:20:47 AM , Rating: 2
Reclaimer77 is just another account for Maddogs44...

THey spew the same nonsense and declare knowin it all. I might not always agre with some ppl here but most of them have a logic to what they say and some basic grasp of how the world works - these two has not.

Thank U for writing my thoughts exactly LoL

/F