Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Comcast Briefly Loses Control of Its Domain Name

Posted by kdawson on from the old-skool-pwned dept.

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.

2 of 222 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Network Solutions seems to be the common trend. by swillden · · Score: 4, Informative

    From the Wired article:

    Network Solutions spokeswoman Susan Wade disputes the hackers' account. "We now know that it was nothing on our end," she says. "There was no breach in our system or social engineering situation on our end."

    Sooo, what she's saying is that Network Solutions' system was operating as designed. Is that supposed to be comforting?

    --
    Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
  2. Re:These guys are my heroes by Thaelon · · Score: 4, Informative

    Try this: http://www.gethuman.com/gethuman_list.asp?bname=%22C%22

    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.

    --

    Question everything