by: Tom Corelis
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.”
