[HN Gopher] Comcast says hackers stole data of close to 36M Xfin...
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Comcast says hackers stole data of close to 36M Xfinity customers
        
       Author : thunderbong
       Score  : 166 points
       Date   : 2023-12-19 17:14 UTC (5 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (techcrunch.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (techcrunch.com)
        
       | happytiger wrote:
       | 0wn3d.
       | 
       | Includes security questions and last four of social security for
       | tens of millions.
       | 
       | Couldn't happen to a nicer company either.
       | 
       | Boilerplate response from them:
       | 
       | https://assets.xfinity.com/assets/dotcom/learn/Notice%20To%2...
        
         | tessierashpool wrote:
         | it didn't happen to a company at all. it happened to their
         | customers. if the CEO faces criminal or civil penalties, or the
         | company does, then it happens to the company.
         | 
         | what makes it worse is Comcat's quasi-monopoly status as a non-
         | optional public utility with, in many areas, no competitors.
         | your only choice is to give away your secrets to a company
         | which will manage them irresponsibly and then act like victims
         | about it.
        
         | RajT88 wrote:
         | "Starting today" - there's no date on that notice. But the URI
         | suggests it was authored on the 15th. Apparently not released
         | for 4 days?
        
           | happytiger wrote:
           | Admitting they suck at security is hard for monopolies. Be
           | sensitive to their feelings man.
        
           | stonepresto wrote:
           | The part of the prompt that suggests its the 15th of December
           | is a GET param, which just means wherever this link was
           | retrieved from is where that date is coming from.
           | 
           | The PDF could have been authored at any time.
           | 
           | Looks like the created date embedded in the metadata is as
           | follows:
           | 
           | 2023-12-18T21:21:19.000Z
           | 
           | Created with MS Word. But even that isn't definitive.
        
         | crazybLanKeT wrote:
         | another reason to never answer those security questions with
         | actual info.
        
           | happytiger wrote:
           | Or put your real birth date.
        
           | AdamJacobMuller wrote:
           | The primary reason being when you have to answer the
           | questions over the phone.
           | 
           | "What is your mother's maiden name?"
           | 
           | "bidah6shee8Dahkouju"
           | 
           | "Wait, what, that is correct how ?"
           | 
           | Every time I hear their confusion and shock, I get a bit more
           | depressed that more people aren't doing this.
        
             | tzs wrote:
             | Most people want to minimize the time it takes to resolve
             | whatever issue has led to them being on the phone with
             | support. Giving "bidah6shee8Dahkouju" as your mother's
             | maiden name does not help achieve that.
             | 
             | Using a different made up mother's maiden name at each site
             | is a good idea, but you can use short names that are easy
             | to pronounce and spell for that to get the security
             | benefits without drawing out the time you have to spend
             | with support.
        
             | amlozano wrote:
             | Protip, use something like a https://diceware.rempe.us/#eff
             | password with 6 words.
             | 
             | They never seem to mind when you just say "litmus secrecy
             | ruckus nest reason send", they don't even skip a beat.
        
               | mdaniel wrote:
               | I enjoy pointing out that 1Password has a dedicated
               | section for generating "security answers" using this same
               | method (they allow "horse battery staple" style with
               | variable number of words, although a minimum of 3)
               | https://support.1password.com/generate-security-
               | questions/
               | 
               | Like all good Bitwarden things, feel free to spit^W vote
               | for a similar feature request
               | https://community.bitwarden.com/t/security-questions-
               | track-a...
        
               | mhb wrote:
               | KeePass, too.
        
               | whatevaa wrote:
               | Bitwarden has passphrase generation which can achieve
               | similar thing.
        
             | scarmig wrote:
             | An equally likely outcome:
             | 
             | "What is your mother's maiden name?"
             | 
             | "Oh, some random collection of letters and numbers... I
             | think there was an a and a d in it?"
             | 
             | "Ah, okay, what info or money do you want?"
        
       | teeray wrote:
       | > and their secret questions and answers
       | 
       | Periodic reminder that these are just passwords too. They should
       | be treated as such by users (generate random responses) and devs
       | (hash and salt them).
        
         | gruez wrote:
         | >They should be treated as such by users (generate random
         | responses) and devs (hash and salt them).
         | 
         | I agree for tech savvy users it's prudent to treat them as
         | passwords, but it doesn't extend to the general public. If they
         | should be treated as passwords, what's the point of having them
         | then? They're most often used in password reset flows. If it's
         | a random string/phrase, they're basically useless in that use
         | case. In what situation would you have the randomly chosen
         | string for the security question, but not the randomly chosen
         | string for the password?
        
           | renewiltord wrote:
           | They're just recovery codes by a different name and with a
           | built-in hint. I could reset the password of half of my
           | friends from what I know. For a random person, I could
           | probably just use something like this
           | https://www.fastbackgroundcheck.com/people/gavin-
           | newsom/san-... and get almost all the way there.
           | 
           | As a user, if you want guessable recovery codes, that's fine.
           | It's all in the threat model. The password for this account
           | is very guessable. It used to be 000000. I don't care about
           | any possible threat to it.
        
             | eli wrote:
             | I don't think most users care much one way or the other.
             | But they do sometimes lose their credentials and need a
             | password reset and if the reset flow assumes you'll be able
             | to answer those questions anyway, you're going to have a
             | bad time.
        
               | ghaff wrote:
               | In general, you don't want a forgotten password to be a
               | "sucks to be you" situation or even a come to a physical
               | office with two forms of ID situation.
        
           | teeray wrote:
           | > What's the point of having them then?
           | 
           | Their purpose these days is to provide a way for anyone to
           | reset your account credentials using public information or
           | the answers to Facebook quizes to find out your secret pirate
           | name.
        
           | JohnFen wrote:
           | For people who want to retain the convenience, my suggestion
           | is twofold:
           | 
           | 1) Don't answer the question that was asked. Mentally
           | translate it to a different question entirely. "Name of first
           | pet" is always answered as "color of first car", for
           | instance.
           | 
           | 2) Make the answers full sentences, not just single words. If
           | the answer you're providing is "color of first car", the
           | answer shouldn't be "white", it should be "The color of my
           | first car was white".
        
             | heax wrote:
             | Just give your pet a random 4096 Bit string as name and
             | your safe, no need to add unneeded complexity.
        
               | tzs wrote:
               | There are a couple problems with that approach.
               | 
               | 1. That is likely to exceed the maximum length allowed
               | for the form fields you have to use to enter it on web
               | pages or in apps.
               | 
               | You might find that on the page where you initially set
               | it up the page silently truncated it to say 1000 bits,
               | and that's what got stored on the server. But the page
               | where you need to use it for password recovery handles
               | 1500 bits, and the form in their app only handles 500.
               | 
               | So you cannot get it to work in the app no matter what,
               | and can only use it on the recovery page if you somehow
               | figure out that only 1000 bits are on the server and
               | truncate to that yourself.
               | 
               | 2. Some places use the same security questions when you
               | phone support. The support person asks you one of the
               | security questions and can read the answer from the
               | database. They compare that to what you tell them over
               | the phone.
               | 
               | You probably don't want to go through that with a random
               | 4096 bit string.
        
               | JohnFen wrote:
               | > Some places use the same security questions when you
               | phone support.
               | 
               | Fascinating. This is something I never encountered, so it
               | never occurred to me that this might be done.
        
               | willcipriano wrote:
               | Yeah, easy way to own the security conscious is call
               | customer service and "authenticate yourself" by
               | "answering" that you made the security response a bunch
               | of random letters and numbers beacuse you were in a hurry
               | and was confused about the assignment.
        
           | dfxm12 wrote:
           | The point is, if you're answering these honestly, if an
           | attacker knows your mother maiden's name and which hospital
           | you were born in from attacking Comcast, now they can use
           | this info to reset your bank password. If you had different
           | answers on these different services, attackers are still at
           | square one in terms of getting your bank info.
           | 
           | Honestly, I don't know if there's a point to having these
           | questions. At least one security expert feels similarly: http
           | s://www.schneier.com/essays/archives/2005/02/the_curse_o...
        
           | 12_throw_away wrote:
           | > what's the point of having them then?
           | 
           | None for the end user! (Although I assume there must be some
           | corporate career incentives or something for implementing
           | security theater like this, since they keep doing it anyway.)
        
         | bri3d wrote:
         | > Periodic reminder that these are just passwords too. They
         | should be treated as such by users (generate random responses)
         | and devs (hash and salt them).
         | 
         | Unfortunately this is not how almost any business treats them;
         | they are frequently used as challenge/response authentication
         | over the phone, so using a random response or hashing and
         | salting them doesn't work.
         | 
         | Authenticating a user over the phone is a major unsolved
         | problem IMO, and responsible for a huge swath of modern account
         | takeover issues.
        
         | washadjeffmad wrote:
         | I usually recommend disregarding the questions and filling in a
         | common response for every field (with the current date or the
         | name of the company or service, for instance), and writing it
         | down.
         | 
         | No one except hackers or certain federal agencies would be able
         | to compare the results of security questions across independent
         | identity management systems.
        
       | electrondood wrote:
       | Can we just have financial penalties per compromised user for
       | these companies already?
        
         | gruez wrote:
         | *statutory penalties
         | 
         | You can already seek financial compensation through the tort
         | system[1]. It just sucks right now because you have to
         | demonstrate harm, which is hard. Having a law that's like "each
         | breach equals $50" makes lawsuits go much more smoothly.
         | 
         | [1] eg.
         | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_Equifax_data_breach#Litig...
        
           | eli wrote:
           | And it should be punitive. The point isn't just to compensate
           | me for the harm I suffered
        
             | jen20 wrote:
             | Indeed: if companies are to be treated as people, and we
             | are to have a federal death penalty, corporate execution
             | should be the result of breaches like this.
        
               | tedunangst wrote:
               | As a Comcast customer, I'd be kinda upset if I woke up
               | one morning and my internet connection was dead.
        
               | evilduck wrote:
               | As a Comcast customer, I assume this is already your
               | status quo several times a year.
        
               | eli wrote:
               | Not the connection, just the company administering and
               | profiting from it.
        
               | gruez wrote:
               | What do you think happens if the internet company is
               | dissolved, all the workers are laid off, and all the
               | assets are liquidated?
        
               | eli wrote:
               | Why do you think that's the only way this can work?
               | 
               | When a bank fails, the FDIC typically facilitates new
               | ownership over the course of a weekend. The workers still
               | have jobs and the branches reopen on Monday. The top
               | executives are out and the investors take a loss.
               | 
               | If it is _impossible_ for any other company to take over
               | the service than the company is too big in the first
               | place and should be broken up or nationalized. The free
               | market doesn 't work without meaningful competition.
        
               | gruez wrote:
               | What's the difference between "corporate execution" and
               | "large fine" then?
        
               | eli wrote:
               | Well an obvious difference is that one directly removes
               | executives who were responsible.
               | 
               | But sure, I'm amenable to a sufficiently large fine. Even
               | just allowing class action lawsuits (despite their flaws)
               | would be a lot better than the status quo.
               | 
               | I'm just saying that a "corporate death penalty" doesn't
               | necessarily harm customers. A large fine that an
               | entrenched monopolistic provider can just pass on to
               | customers the same way they do other "compliance costs"
               | doesn't really help much.
        
               | dfxm12 wrote:
               | To keep with the same metaphor, death penalty trials are
               | often long and drawn out. They are also rare enough that
               | they often make the news.
               | 
               | There's no way the company could be killed overnight, and
               | one would have to be living under a rock to not hear
               | about such a big business dying.
        
         | supernova87a wrote:
         | I propose that the fines be per piece of information leaked,
         | and combinations of information:
         | 
         | $1 for name
         | 
         | $2 for address
         | 
         | $3 for email
         | 
         | $4 for phone number
         | 
         | $5 for social security number
         | 
         | --------
         | 
         |  _and multiply for combinations thereof_.
        
           | jmclnx wrote:
           | I can get behind this if you multiply the amounts by 100 and
           | index it to inflation x 2
        
       | cvalka wrote:
       | Awesome
        
       | vaidhy wrote:
       | Given these info loss from major companies, it is worthwhile to
       | assume that your name, your phone number and last 4 digit SSN are
       | pretty much available for any actor.
       | 
       | For my part, I have put in a credit freeze with all three credit
       | bureaus. I am wondering what else I should be doing.
        
         | mattwad wrote:
         | actually I'm pretty sure that all our social security numbers
         | leaked in full since the Experian/TransUnion hacks. I have kept
         | my scores frozen ever since then. It's a minor annoyance but I
         | don't know why this isn't required now
        
           | chatmasta wrote:
           | They've been leaked ever since they were shared with anyone
           | other than yourself and the Social Security Administration.
           | Any system using an SSN as a password is fundamentally broken
           | - just the fact that a company can verify your SSN is proof
           | that it's an authentication mechanism known to more than only
           | yourself... (Ok, they could be hashing it, or at least the
           | first five digits of it... but they're not.)
        
         | SoftTalker wrote:
         | Yes. And not just the last 4 but your entire SSN, and most or
         | all of the data that Credit Bureaus maintain, such as date and
         | place of birth, past places of residence, whether you own or
         | rent, income, education, marital status, and on and on.
         | 
         | It's all been exposed, somewhere, by someone who didn't
         | exercise due care for protecting it.
         | 
         | Until this data becomes a liability and not an asset that can
         | be sold and expoited, it will continue.
        
         | wimp wrote:
         | It's all out there, tenfold. It's available to anyone who wants
         | it enough.
         | 
         | I've had my identity stolen. The SSA office essentially does
         | nothing to resolve it, they place the burden upon you as the
         | victim to fix an unfixable problem. I didn't even bother. The
         | whole thing is fucked.
        
         | CursedUrn wrote:
         | Doesn't Comcast collect browsing history too? This data breach
         | could be a big one
        
       | 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
       | Who was the threat actor?
        
         | hoofhearted wrote:
         | I think based of the Citrix vulnerability alone, there is only
         | one group to look at
        
           | 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
           | And who would that be?
        
             | hoofhearted wrote:
             | Same folks behind the OPM hack
        
         | happytiger wrote:
         | Look, this isn't theater. Hackers aren't actors. Jeez.
        
       | comcast192784 wrote:
       | Not suprising. When I worked for an Xfinity "Branded Partner"
       | they played it fast and loose with security. During training, a
       | trainer on equal level ranking as a national director told my
       | class full of new hires we should all make our secure internal-
       | use Comcast account password "E@sypassword1", and later in the
       | class told us that if a customer forgot their phone in their car
       | we should just bypass the 2FA completely. why? Because there is a
       | tracker on the door that tracks how many open/closes linked to
       | the conversion rate. The conversion rate was considered more
       | important than properly authenticating accounts. Im pretty sure
       | Comcast knows about this and does nothing. Needless to say, when
       | I made my concerns known I was terminated same day for "not being
       | a good fit".
        
         | meepmorp wrote:
         | At one point in the early 2000s, Comcast's internal network
         | wasn't internal. IIRC, everything (workstations, servers,
         | printers, etc.) had a 24.x.x.x address with no firewall or
         | other mitigations in place; you could directly connect to
         | arbitrary ports on any corporate machine, from anywhere. And
         | they weren't exactly on top of patching.
        
           | xyst wrote:
           | Back when ICANN was just giving any company /8 blocks of IPV4
           | addresses
        
       | jerf wrote:
       | "The company says for an unspecified number of customers, hackers
       | may have also accessed names, contact information, dates of
       | birth, the last four-digits of Social Security numbers, and their
       | secret questions and answers."
       | 
       | Ah, yes, it truly gives me hope for the future of humanity when
       | these hackers break in to a corporate database like this, have
       | total access to all this sensitive data, and then, out of a sense
       | of fair play and comity, run "SELECT * FROM customers LIMIT
       | UNSPECIFIED" rather than just "SELECT * FROM customers". It's so
       | nice of them to access only an "unspecified" number of customer's
       | data rather than all of them.
        
         | a1369209993 wrote:
         | To be fair, Comcast's database software is probably crap made
         | by Oracle or something. It's not totally implausible that it
         | crashed partway through printing the results of "SELECT * FROM
         | customers" so the last X% was never sent.
        
       | RajT88 wrote:
       | Logged in just now to see if I got the prompt to change my
       | password (I did). The only mail I had waiting in my mailbox was
       | identity theft scam phishing email.
       | 
       | Good job all around guys.
        
         | jerf wrote:
         | But the password reset prompt was, and I quote, "As part of our
         | commitment to you, Comcast routinely reviews and monitors
         | account security. Please update your password to help protect
         | you and your account."
         | 
         | No word about a compromise or anything, just corporate bland.
         | 
         | Also I got a kick out of their screen "obfuscating" my email to
         | j***rf@jerf.org. Fantastic job there. (Anyone not quite sure
         | what I'm getting at are invited to consider the domain name and
         | my Hacker News nym and come to the obvious conclusion about the
         | clandestine character hiding behind those three secret stars.)
         | Now truly I am safe from those thousands of spams a year I get
         | from spammers shoulder-surfing my email address. I really ought
         | to do something about them. Their harsh whispers as they
         | furtively read my email address into their phones for their
         | accomplices to copy every time it's on the screen make it
         | difficult to concentrate on work sometimes.
        
           | gnicholas wrote:
           | Yep, I remember being forced to change my password a week or
           | two ago. It told me I had to periodically change it, which
           | was weird because I've been with Comcast for many years and
           | didn't remember ever being prompted before now.
        
       | bell-cot wrote:
       | Yet another reason to say "nope" when Yet Another Co. wants me to
       | route my interactions with them through their app or web site, or
       | give them answers to security questions, or ...
        
       | robotburrito wrote:
       | This might be bad for Xfinity. A lot of their customers may leave
       | them for a variety of readily available competitors created by
       | the dynamic free market economy.
        
         | dmitrygr wrote:
         | You might want to post an explanation for non-Americans about
         | why this is hilarious!
        
           | boredtofears wrote:
           | Regional ISP markets are usually a monopoly or duopoly. If
           | you're on comcast, its unlikely there is another high speed
           | option out there for you (or if there is, the option is no
           | better than comcast).
        
             | doubled112 wrote:
             | Canada too. Almost every independent ISP is just a reseller
             | anyway.
        
             | phkahler wrote:
             | Starlink is everywhere Comcast is. It's not the highest
             | speed, but it apparently pretty good.
        
               | jcrawfordor wrote:
               | A lot of Comcast customers in this audience are going to
               | be on 500Mbps or Gbps plans. Starlink just can't
               | meaningfully compete with these speeds. Most people in US
               | cities will have two options, cable and either bonded
               | VDSL2 or fiber from the telco. Both will be faster and
               | usually cheaper than Starlink.
               | 
               | The main competitor in most cases, after the cable
               | company and the telephone company, is LTE. Also faster
               | and cheaper than Starlink in a suburban area, but in
               | dense areas the speeds really suffer. I was on LTE home
               | internet for a good while and enjoyed 100+ Mbps at night
               | but only 20 during the day, due to living too close to
               | downtown. Only $45/mo though!
        
             | smcin wrote:
             | ..."in the US". That's a political issue, not a
             | technological issue. And if you want to inquire about the
             | root-cause:
             | 
             | "Comcast does so much lobbying that it says disclosing it
             | all is too hard" https://arstechnica.com/tech-
             | policy/2019/05/comcast-does-so-...
        
             | two_in_one wrote:
             | That was a joke: "Verizon made even Comcast look good". Not
             | sure if it's still around.
        
           | chopete3 wrote:
           | I think it is something to do with cabling deals Comcast did
           | with local governments. Once Comcast lays the cables,
           | 
           | 1- Nobody else gets permits to lay cables in that area.
           | Governments can't even share the data about cable
           | locations/network detail. You can ask, as a property owner if
           | it is around a specific location and they will say yes or no.
           | 
           | 2-The agreements also prohibit local governments from laying
           | out public cables, like roads.
           | 
           | 3-Xfinity won't share that network with anybody else.
           | 
           | Customers are stuck whatever Comcast deoes. These breaches
           | have no meanining other than getting a check for $5-100 when
           | they settle the lawsuit claims.
        
             | jmclnx wrote:
             | So true, but you may be living in a fantasy world if you
             | think anyone will get anything from Comcast :)
             | 
             | Just about anyone in the US knows what this means, you
             | Comcast Bill will go up at least 10% as soon as the Fed Gov
             | stop watching them for this breach.
        
             | bozhark wrote:
             | Sounds like piss-poor municipalities
        
         | xyst wrote:
         | I think this was a South Park episode
        
           | yterdy wrote:
           | Boondocks. Huey's speech on the origins of American
           | corporate/"customer" dynamics in the Triangle Trade and
           | exploitation of slaves and coal miners should have gotten
           | them another Peabody.
        
         | oooyay wrote:
         | I left the Comcast/Xfinity empire for the CenturyLink/Quantum
         | empire about a month ago. There are other choices in my area
         | too, but none that were fiber.
        
         | kryogen1c wrote:
         | I know you're being sarcastic and that's fine, but the target
         | of your sarcasm is incorrect. ISPs are very far from a "dynamic
         | free market economy". Complex problems don't lend themselves to
         | pithy internet commentary though.
        
         | apapapa wrote:
         | LoL
        
         | leotravis10 wrote:
         | Comcast is a total regional monopoly in most cities so I'm glad
         | that cities that do invest in municipal/community broadband are
         | taking matters into their own hands to combat this.
        
       | tky wrote:
       | This on the heels of requiring bank account details to preserve
       | auto-pay discounts, just like their security peer over in
       | wireless, T-Mobile.
       | 
       | What could go wrong?
        
       | advael wrote:
       | Comcast is a great example of a company I'd like to see antitrust
       | law literally destroy rather than merely chastise
        
         | orthecreedence wrote:
         | Do all the big telecoms. Then maybe we'd finally get a real
         | municipal fiber movement going.
        
           | advael wrote:
           | Maybe the entire class of services that can meaningfully be
           | called "infrastructure" is a bad idea to make the exclusive
           | purview of private, profit-motivated liability shields. Just
           | spitballing
        
             | orthecreedence wrote:
             | Yeah, completely agree. Infrastructure always congeals into
             | monopoly. It's incredibly stupid to even bother letting
             | private industry manage it.
        
               | advael wrote:
               | Sometimes we skip the congealing step and just establish
               | a government-protected but privately-operated monopoly
               | for a regional utility as a matter of course, and this is
               | after decades of failure on the parts of most if not all
               | of these monopolies when compared to similar-sized
               | government-run utilities. Something has got to give
        
       | kderbyma wrote:
       | Comcast is incompetent and unable to handle the very
       | infrastructure it supposedly offers.....break them up and get
       | this shit show outta here
        
       | DoesntMatter22 wrote:
       | Having worked for Comcast I can't tell you how many times I
       | brought up security concerns and I was told that they were doing
       | better than ever before and its a non issue.
       | 
       | Idk which systems were hacked but I worked on thier innermost
       | apps, and they were a dumpster fire.
        
         | iFred wrote:
         | Oh man, xray is just a nightmare waiting to happen.
        
       | liquidise wrote:
       | > On October 10, 2023, one of Xfinity's software providers,
       | Citrix, announced a vulnerability in one of its products used by
       | Xfinity and thousands of other companies worldwide. At the time
       | Citrix made this announcement, it released a patch to fix the
       | vulnerability. Citrix issued additional mitigation guidance on
       | October 23, 2023. We promptly patched and mitigated our
       | systems[1]
       | 
       | This reads like "we didn't patch until weeks after the
       | vulnerability and patch were provided" but it's worded
       | intentionally unclear to differ blame.
       | 
       | > Q: How will Comcast prevent another incident from occurring?
       | 
       | > A: We have robust security programs in place which help us to
       | discover criminal activity such as this one
       | 
       | You have to love how their response to their own question is,
       | functionally, "we won't prevent your information from being
       | stolen, but boy howdy we'll sure know when it happens though!"
       | 
       | As a long-time disgruntled comcast customer, i have to say none
       | of this surprises me. But local monopolies mean my wallet doesn't
       | really get a vote in this matter.
       | 
       | 1.
       | https://assets.xfinity.com/assets/dotcom/learn/Notice%20To%2...
        
       | advael wrote:
       | I wonder how many enormous breaches of so-called sensitive
       | information it will take for infrastructural security to improve.
       | Like I think at this point it's reasonable to assume that most
       | SSNs are public information, and dates of birth arguably always
       | were. Why do important services still use this as a final word
       | authentication for any individual? Why is it legal for a person's
       | credit score for example to affect things like mortgage
       | applications, when these measures are permanently affected by
       | identity theft that could happen to anyone at any time through
       | the fault of one of any number of irresponsible companies that
       | routinely hold enough information to impersonate someone to both
       | the government and their bank (setting aside for a moment how
       | fraudulent and irresponsible the practices of the aggregators of
       | these scores are themselves).
        
       | mensetmanusman wrote:
       | Pass a law requiring each municipality to offer fiber isp.
        
       | yumraj wrote:
       | It seems that my info has been stolen by a variety of hackers as
       | part of this and several prior hacks that at this point does it
       | even matter.
       | 
       | For all practical purposes I'm sure my info, and almost
       | everyone's, is out there.
       | 
       | Genuinely curious: Does it even matter anymore. I think all one
       | can do is freeze the credit and hope for the best.
        
       | latchkey wrote:
       | Here is the PDF notice:
       | 
       | https://assets.xfinity.com/assets/dotcom/learn/Notice%20To%2...
       | 
       | I tried to go to the first fraud alert link in the document:
       | 
       | https://equifax.com/personal/creditreport-services/credit-fr...
       | 
       | 404
        
       | technion wrote:
       | What hasn't gotten enough attention here in my view is how
       | astoundingly basic this exploit is.
       | 
       | https://github.com/GossiTheDog/scanning/blob/main/CitrixBlee...
       | 
       | You've got a single curl request to a web service that for
       | magical reasons is running as root. There's no SELinux/jails/etc,
       | and no logs written for this request.
       | 
       | Remember this next time someone wants to sell you a WAF: The
       | Netscaler isn't some wiki application, one of the things it is
       | sold for is specifically as a WAF.
        
       | markhahn wrote:
       | we need to blame the failing party (Comcast here), we need to
       | make customer data outrageously radioactive, so companies like
       | Comcast try hard to avoid storing it...
        
       | ianbutler wrote:
       | As a recent Xfinity customer, I am delighted by this update.
        
       | say_it_as_it_is wrote:
       | It's probably data that Comcast shouldn't have had in the first
       | place
        
       | chaps wrote:
       | Heh. Years ago I had a call with Comcast's CISO about them
       | setting up a bug bounty program after I informed them about a
       | leak of exposed information (sysadmin's home dir, with ssh keys
       | and more). They told me that if they setup a bug bounty program
       | like that, that they'd effectively go bankrupt. So here we are.
       | Not expecting them to go bankrupt from this, but it's sad to see
       | how their apathy turns into actual harms.
        
       | midtake wrote:
       | I have yet to see a large scale hack on services hosted on Linux
       | stacks using basic technologies like SSH. Whenever large
       | companies get hacked and their technology stacks consist entirely
       | of overvalued "security for midwits" enterprise software, I just
       | groan. It irks me that my own information security is orders of
       | magnitude more robust than a company worth many billions.
       | 
       | It is clear to me that security is theater to these companies,
       | and that is why companies that resell TLS tunnels with 2000s
       | technology bolted on like Citrix get away with charging so much.
       | It should be assumed that there was no security to begin with. If
       | you told me in 2 years that a foreign adversary had compromised
       | all American companies since 2012 I would not even blink. It is
       | more or less something I expect to eventually hear.
        
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       (page generated 2023-12-19 23:01 UTC)