Comcast Customers At Risk Due To Shared Hacks And Data Exfiltration
Written By Michael Pawloski And Presented By Ziften CEO Charles Leaver
Comcast Customers are Victims of Data Exfiltration and Shared Hacks via Other Companies
On November 5th of this year, the private information of approximately 200,000 Comcast customers was compromised. Comcast was forced to make this announcement when it came to light that a list of 590,000 Comcast customer emails and passwords could be purchased on the dark web for a mere $1,000. Comcast maintains that there was no security breach to their network but rather it was via past, shared hacks from other companies. Comcast further claims that only 200,000 of these 590,000 customers actually still exist in their system.
Less than 2 months earlier, Comcast had already been slapped with a $22 million fine over its accidental publishing of nearly 75,000 customers’ personal details. Somewhat ironically, these customers had specifically paid Comcast for “unlisted voice-over-IP,” a line item on the Comcast bill that stipulated that each customer’s information would be kept private.
Comcast instituted a mass-reset of 200,000 customer passwords, who might have accessed these accounts before the list was put up for sale. While a simple password reset by Comcast will to some extent protect these accounts going forward, this does nothing to protect those customers who may have reused the same email and password combination on banking and credit card logins. If the customer accounts were accessed prior to being disclosed it is certainly possible that other personal details — such as automatic payment information and home address — were already obtained.
The bottom line: Assuming Comcast wasn’t hacked directly, they were the victim of numerous other hacks that contained data related to their customers. Detection and Response solutions like Ziften can prevent mass data exfiltration and often mitigate damage done when these inevitable attacks occur.
Comcast Customers are Victims of Data Exfiltration and Shared Hacks via Other Companies
On November 5th of this year, the private information of approximately 200,000 Comcast customers was compromised. Comcast was forced to make this announcement when it came to light that a list of 590,000 Comcast customer emails and passwords could be purchased on the dark web for a mere $1,000. Comcast maintains that there was no security breach to their network but rather it was via past, shared hacks from other companies. Comcast further claims that only 200,000 of these 590,000 customers actually still exist in their system.
Less than 2 months earlier, Comcast had already been slapped with a $22 million fine over its accidental publishing of nearly 75,000 customers’ personal details. Somewhat ironically, these customers had specifically paid Comcast for “unlisted voice-over-IP,” a line item on the Comcast bill that stipulated that each customer’s information would be kept private.
Comcast instituted a mass-reset of 200,000 customer passwords, who might have accessed these accounts before the list was put up for sale. While a simple password reset by Comcast will to some extent protect these accounts going forward, this does nothing to protect those customers who may have reused the same email and password combination on banking and credit card logins. If the customer accounts were accessed prior to being disclosed it is certainly possible that other personal details — such as automatic payment information and home address — were already obtained.
The bottom line: Assuming Comcast wasn’t hacked directly, they were the victim of numerous other hacks that contained data related to their customers. Detection and Response solutions like Ziften can prevent mass data exfiltration and often mitigate damage done when these inevitable attacks occur.