DNS hijack
Ah, the sweet irony!
> The incident cost a loss to Comcast of $128,578.
"Because someone else other than us hijacked our customer's DNS"
Sympathy, gone.
The potty-mouthed hackers who hijacked Comcast's domain name for several hours last year were charged with intentionally damaging a protected computer system. Christopher Allen Lewis, 19, of Delaware, James Robert Black Jr., 20, of Washington, and Michael Paul Nebel, 27, of Michigan were indicted Thursday on a single felony …
The rest need a stern talking-to and early bedtime without supper. I have to admit, though, seeing a plain l33t$p£3|< defacement took me back a good few years!
Angel Steve? Well, I've never used it before so it makes a change, since I do not and never will own any apple trinkets.
But you know there is a forum full of people somewhere laughing at how they got some idiots to attack comcast, while 'forgetting' to teach the importance of, oh I don't know, everything important about wiping your tracks, not ringing comcast up, not leaving your handles and screen names everywhere.
What is this, 19-fucking-98? These skiddies don't deserve punishment; they deserve an education. And all references to 'metasploit' removed from their boxes.
Back in the day us kids were 12 to 16 or hopefully smart enough to not be easily traceable. Truly, the interwebz for teh grat unwashed. Wonder how comcast calculated that number, though. I think there was at least a large factor involved.
Can't say I condone skiddie actions, but I don't have sympathy for corporate DNS hijacking either. Still, comcast presumably does own their systems (leaving it up to the customers to complain or take their business elsewhere) and the skiddies didn't, legally.
Remains the minor matter of what to do about it. I think this is too harsh already. Most of the post-1993 set have no idea whatsoever that the internet always was and largely still is a co-operative endeavour. This makes calculating damages an excercise in inventing numbers and hoping they sound plausible. Too bad too many adults aren't internet savvy enough to be responsible on the internet and thus cannot make clear to the young'uns that failure to co-operate or even behave anti-socially is very much a no-no. But still, a slap on the wrist is really all that should be needed.
I presume it involves establishing the exact financial loss represented by a person thinking "what a mickey mouse operation, let's go to that well-run AOL," plus the number of such people, and other sundry brand value loss calculations. And some overtime. Plus a chair destroyed by Ballmer's nephew working there as an intern.