Comcast injecting JS

https://gist.github.com/ryankearney/4146814

by brokentone • 13 years ago

461 273 13 years ago

gist.github.com

brokentone5• 13 years ago

I'm getting a lot of requests on our servers for "/e8f6b078-0f35-11de-85c5-efc5ef23aa1f/aupm/notify.do" so I can confirm this is in production. I can also confirm they suck at JS.

networked• 13 years ago

How about creating /e8f6b078-0f35-11de-85c5-efc5ef23aa1f/aupm/notify.do on your server to notify Comcast users about what their internet service provider is doing? If people started doing that en masse it could bring attention to the problem and with enough publicity get Comcast to reconsider JS injection.

I don't really understand the point of this, either. Couldn't they starting redirecting users to a static page somewhere if there were a real need for a "critical and time sensitive" alert? If the supposed alerts aren't critical enough to justify doing that, use email, IM, RSS or twitter, or even build a custom notification notification app.

TheOsiris• 13 years ago

Best idea ever! But, they'll probably prosecute who ever does it for some BS reason and sentence them to a term of 500 years

wizzard• 13 years ago

How about putting a giant video file there? Or just embed this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ilMx7k7mso (language)

kevinburke2• 13 years ago

Google occasionally will do this to let users searching for Google requests know that their browsing experienced is compromised.

Diamons• 13 years ago

I'm assuming you mean the browser detection using useragent right? What's the better way of doing it?

coolsunglasses• 13 years ago

Feature detection, to start.

mikeryan2• 13 years ago

I'm torn.

This seems bad, but the warning (exceeding your bandwidth quota) seems valuable. I can't think of another, better way to message this.

icholy• 13 years ago

They should redirect to a notification page. Injecting js is unacceptable.

drdaeman• 13 years ago

This is a still intrusion in others communications.

I wonder isn't there any law in US that forbids carriers from fiddling with messages?

jimktrains22• 13 years ago

Email? Text?

mikeryan2• 13 years ago

That could work, but I'm guessing often this might not be the account owner (kids?) racking up the bandwidth.

passionfruit• 13 years ago

Here are some other ways.

1. They could email you. 2. They could send you a SMS. 3. They could let you view your bandwidth usage by logging into their site. 4. They could provide an application (desktop or mobile) to keep track of your bandwidth and alert you at certain points.

dopamean• 13 years ago

I use T-Mobile as my mobile carrier and as far as I know they do numbers 2, 3, and 4 that you listed here. I know this because I have received an SMS when I neared my 2GB of unlimited 4G data transfer. I also have logged into their site and used the app on my phone (HTC One S) to monitor my data usage. The phone app even tells you how much data was used by each app and when. It is fantastic. Could that be so hard for Comcast?

DanBC• 13 years ago

My provider (T-Mobile in the UK, using a mobile 3g dongle) send me an SMS, and the connection software has lots of graphs and numbers.

They still send interstitial content warning me that I've exceeded my fair-use limit. It's a bit annoying because I very carefully checked what the limits were before I signed up.

What's worse is that they use weird, broken, IP addresses and horrible proxies for image mangling.

EDIT: Here's a pastebin.

(http://pastebin.com/k6ddD0sJ)

EDIT: Here's a Security \\\stack Exchange question about it: (http://security.stackexchange.com/questions/9368/mobile-carr...)

Bockit• 13 years ago

My ISP gives emails at 50%, 80% and of course 100%. They also do options 3 and 4 (no idea about 2) but the emails are so very easy, and knowing you've hit 50% gives you time to mitigate before you get capped.

djtriptych• 13 years ago

Your profile reveals you're a former Comcast employee. That's a disclaimer worth posting here.

But yeah, if you have service with Comcast they have your home phone, email addresses, and physical address. They can get in touch with you every way that every company that CAN'T read all of your internet traffic already gets in touch with you.

The method they've chosen is terrible for at least the following reasons: - The alert will not work on many platforms & devices. - The alert may not reach the account owner. - The alert will not work on SSL traffic. - There is no record that the customer saw the alert (contrast with phone call) - There are serious privacy issues involved in parsing user's web traffic.

kyrias3• 13 years ago

The alert will significantly increase your data usage...

guelo• 13 years ago

It's extremely bad. The fact that ISP monopolies are not regulated in favor of consumers is slowly going to destroy the openness that has made the web so successful. Instead of giving us raw pipes these monopolies are injecting themselves as proxies where they can monitor, cap bandwidths, shape traffic, censor content, insert messages and even add ads, which Comcast already does when a DNS request is not resolved in a HTTP session.

If you look at what Comcast does on the TV side, things like adding ads to the guide so it's barely usable, you can see where this is going. But the federal regulators of the monopolies are asleep at the switch, we can't even get network neutrality passed. The monopolies know how to play the lobbying game as well as how to slowly turn up the heat so the users aren't all outraged at once. But we can expect more abuses, more ads, more monitoring, more restrictions, more unwanted 'value adds' as time goes on.

pyre2• 13 years ago

  | It's extremely bad. The fact that ISP monopolies
  | are not regulated in favor of consumers is slowly
  | going to destroy the openness that has made the
  | web so successful.

This is a little over the top. Whether or not to use this to notify users of time-sensitive information could be a question posed at even a small ISP without such 'evil ambitions.'

It's probably more useful to discuss the pros/cons of this approach to notifying users than it is to decry over-arching problems with the entire industry. These (over-arching industry issuse) have been discussed ad nauseum, and action is more useful than discussion at this point (at least on technical forums such as this).

  | But the federal regulators of the monopolies
  | are asleep at the switch

Look up regulatory capture.

mikeash• 13 years ago

I suppose calling on the phone is out of the question.

notatoad• 13 years ago

I can't think of a worse way to message it. You don't inject your data into my private communications. No matter what.

The right way would be to ask the customer when they sign up for service what method they would like to receive service notices through. Phone, email, SMS, lettermail, twitter, Facebook, there's a million better ways than to modify my data.

ars3• 13 years ago

And what happens when your 6 year old kid gets all the notifications? Or your neighbor who is using your Wi-Fi?

lawnchair_larry• 13 years ago

Oh boy.

Since you're a comcast employee, maybe go ask the guys running your SMTP/POP3/IMAP servers. I have faith that you guys can come up with some way to communicate with the people using them.

sbarre• 13 years ago

This is nothing new..

Rogers has been doing this for years in Canada already..

They use it to notify subscribers when they are approaching their bandwidth quota (75%) and then again when they hit 100%. You actually have to click a "I understand" button to have it not show up over and over.

pyre2• 13 years ago

If you go into your MyRogers account, they actually give you a log of when you've accepted these notices.

kyrias3• 13 years ago

Well it's checking for Netscape 6 so who knows when this was originally written...

rescripting3• 13 years ago

Rogers also used to serve ads in place of an error message when a bad URL was requested. That was the final straw causing me to cancel my service with them and switch to Teksavvy.

desigooner• 13 years ago

So did Comcast IIRC

rocky1138• 13 years ago

For me it was their really low bandwidth caps. Acanac ftw!

katbyte• 13 years ago

How do they do it? Inject into every page or just once you've exceeded the limits? (curious as i use rogers)

mschuster913• 13 years ago

OMG LOL. Have they never heard about jQuery? Christ, they could have made the code so much more elegant.

recursive• 13 years ago

So you think they should inject a third-party dependency instead of just some inline js? And that would make it more elegant?

mschuster913• 13 years ago

They could just inject it inline. No problem there.

The whole document.write block 27-51 (possibly the CSS-block too, but I'm not sure about this) could be written far more elegant in jQuery.

But the real saving is that "drag and drop" code - jQuery would abstract all that isIE/isNS crap from them.

hayksaakian• 13 years ago

right tool for the right job.

a 1 page script written for comcast does not demand jQuery.

That's not to say it would have improved it.

mschuster913• 13 years ago

It at least would remove this damn ugly browser switching code. Hey, it's 2013, no need to reinvent the wheel...

STRML4• 13 years ago

-1 not enough jQuery

jarek-foksa• 13 years ago

Their jQuery code would probably look like http://enterprise-js.com/23, with aggressive caching methods used on all jQuery selectors: http://enterprise-js.com/27

spoiler3• 13 years ago

Wait, what? Why didn't I know about this website before? I am writing all these down!!!11oneoneone EOSarcasm

NoodleIncident• 13 years ago

I didn't know you could get downvoted this hard on HN... I had to select it to even read this!

Merrack• 13 years ago

Cox is doing something very similar. It's somewhat disconcerting to see JS like this ending up in pages, especially since they didn't get the URL right and a future version of this script could conceivably allow someone to serve malicious content to every Comcast subscriber, injected directly into your page.

nthitz• 13 years ago

Better hope you aren't naming any of your javascript variables similarly..

iguana• 13 years ago

They're also violating this patent:

http://www.google.com/patents/US20110264729

Which I can tell you for certain that they don't own. Bastards.

trhtrsh• 13 years ago

    Inventors	 Denis Kulgavin
    Applicant	 Kulgavin Denis

Which one are you?

minimaxir• 13 years ago

Wait, does the Detect Browser script actually work for browsers made after 2001? I'd hope that Comcast's customers aren't using Netscape 6...

fosap• 13 years ago

And this is why you should just encrypt everything (even Hacker News) with ssl and install ssl-everywhere.

dangrossman4• 13 years ago

So if you were proxying some other protocol over port 80, Comcast might just inject some JavaScript into the stream and corrupt your data?

I don't even like the thought that they're running some kind of hardware that makes this possible. They're sending packets impersonating a web server you actually want to talk to, pretending to be part of a response you requested?

chadscira2• 13 years ago

I'm sure they are checking content-type headers...

Just because you can do this doesn't mean you should (i will stay away from comcast xfinity).

Total_Meltdown2• 13 years ago

I wouldn't be so sure. They're barely even checking what browser you're running.

stephen_g• 13 years ago

"I don't even like the thought that they're running some kind of hardware that makes this possible"

It's called a proxy server. They're actually really common - many ISPs use them. Any hotspot that shows a log-in page in your browser will, and I know my University's internet goes through one.

Squid [1] is one of the most well-known, and it's open source.

1. http://www.squid-cache.org

metageek• 13 years ago

Isn't JS injection a copyright violation, since it creates a derived work? Or has that idea been shot down before?

ihsw• 13 years ago

Good luck fighting against a team of lawyers with virtually unlimited budget. If you're lucky you might get a cash settlement but they'll still be screwing everybody else with impunity.

shardling• 13 years ago

The idea would be that websites would take action, not end users. (Otherwise, how would it be a copyright vio?) I think we can assume that if it was infringement, Google would have an interest and the pockets to go to battle.

IANAL, but I can't really see how it would be infringement, though.

jerf• 13 years ago

This remains an untested field of copyright law, as far as I know. I've been waiting for literally over a decade for some test case on this matter to come up, and it never does. Perhaps by 2023.

jmcqk6• 13 years ago

Isn't this just a matter of

1) building a webpage where you own the copright

2) Have someone in one of the cities where this is happening browse to your page.

3) Copyright violated, and you get to be the test case!

DanielBMarkham• 13 years ago

Wonder how the folks back at Comcast HQ would feel if the rest of the internet started adding messages to their web browsing telling them this kind of thing is unsatisfactory? Hey, this content injection game is a game that we all can play.

This is the old "windows alert" nonsense. Everybody and their brother that touched the windows system thought the user would want a popup when their program did something. So the user experience was/is full of annoying popups, warnings, and information messages. Log onto a heavily-customized windows machine that hasn't been used in a month or two and it's like visiting Los Vegas. Good luck trying to get anything done.

Comcast. All kinds of other internet providers manage to communicate these things to their subscribers without this nonsense. Take a hint.

lessnonymous• 13 years ago

Interestingly it would be easy to write some code that detected THIS code. Get web developers to add it to their sites and make it show a message that comcast are charging them for traffic they're causing. And then link to the class action.

inject.ly isn't registered (yet) so let's presume some enterprising HN reader uses that.

As a web dev, all I need to do is <script src="//inject.ly/detect.js"></script> and it will detect this (and any future variant) ISP injected content.

Extra points for someone implementing this to have it optionally make a JS call to another function or inject a customisable HTML widget on the page.

namuol2• 13 years ago

Or just make it a browser extension.

aquanext• 13 years ago

Do this!

bigiain2• 13 years ago

Don't we just all need to put an appropriate JSON payload into '/e8f6b078-0f35-11de-85c5-efc5ef23aa1f/aupm/notify.do?dispatch=checkBulletin' on every web server we control?

;-)

x3c• 13 years ago

The URI seems to be dynamically generated. But, yeah, we can write some rewrite rules and serve the requests.

If I'm not wrong, this is implementation of JSONP to avoid cross-domain AJAX request block, right?

STRML4• 13 years ago

This code is beyond awful - it fails to display, makes endless AJAX requests, and more; here are a few fun tidbits:

1. The code is not encapsulated in an IIFE, so it clobbers any global variables (like 'image_url') in the page, breaking any scripts relying on those variables.

2. The code spends an inordinate time checking if you're running Netscape Navigator 6.

3. Strangely, they include a whole bunch of code allowing the message to be dragged around the window (which is nice) but they don't allow it to be closed. Of course, it closes itself after making a single AJAX request into a black hole, so there's that. Bugs piled on top of each other make this entire message mostly harmless, if it weren't for the variable clobbering & bandwidth usage (see the next item...)

4. Upon load, checkBulletin() is immediately invoked. This does an AJAX call to '/e8f6b078-0f35-11de-85c5-efc5ef23aa1f/aupm/notify.do?dispatch=checkBulletin'. I assume this is to check if the bulletin has changed, to see if there are new messages, or maybe to check if the user has acknowledged the message yet. Unfortunately:

* This URL is relative, which means it will never actually reach its intended target (instead filling your web logs with this request)

* Upon xmlhttp.readystate=4 (request finished, successful or not, so this will change to 4 even on a 404 error), the comcast message is hidden. This means that the entire 'bandwidth exceeded' message will actually be hidden as soon as this request completes, which may be in <500ms, giving the user absolutely no time to see or acknowledge it.

* The author makes an attempt to not continue sending AJAX requests to this URL after a successful attempt, but botches it, so this request is actually sent indefinitely, every 5000ms, while every any page is open. This means every single tab on your system is popping AJAX requests every 5 seconds for the whole month that your account is nearing its quota. This likely brings you over quota pretty quickly if you leave your computer on all day.

That's right, this code causes every page served on your system to pop an AJAX request to the wrong URL every 5 seconds, as long as the tabs are open.

We can sit and argue all day whether or not it's ethical to display messages by injecting code into the DOM, but it is certainly unethical to write such awful javascript that clobbers global variables and drives up bandwidth costs by making AJAX requests to the wrong url every 5 seconds until the cows come home. Whoever wrote this script should be fired.

EDIT: Similarly, back in the dialup days, some ISPs would inject ads into their content. One way this was stopped was to argue that it was not legal for the ISP to charge you for data, then artificially inflate the size of that data by injecting ads. This script is doing just the same in a measurable way by causing these AJAX requests to be run every 5 seconds on every tab in your system.

gavinlynch• 13 years ago

That moment you see document.write()'ing style into the document... Yikes.

dribnet• 13 years ago

> Whoever wrote this script should be fired.

Not to mention the potential GPL violation for cut-n-pasting brainjar code.

http://www.brainjar.com/terms.asp

chimeracoder• 13 years ago

Oh, the irony of Comcast being guilty of copyright infringement....

ancarda4• 13 years ago

Ethical stuff aside, I can't imagine hiring someone to actually produce code THIS bad. Where the hell did they find the coder to make this?

bphogan4• 13 years ago

They're all over the place. People just starting out. It could've been an intern fresh out of college. It could've been someone who just never graduated beyond copy-and-paste-from-StackOverflow. It could've been written by a person who never did web development before and was just told to make it work.

The little HN/Twitter/Reddit "awesome programmer" bubble is just that... a bubble. It's easy for us to forget that lots of people write lots of bad, untested code all day long. As much as it frustrates me, lots of people code who don't care about code - it's just their job.

fnordfnordfnord3• 13 years ago

Unpaid/underpaid interns!

gcr3• 13 years ago

Honest question: Why is everyone so cynical and brash here?

Is it because we don't like Comcast?

nobleach• 13 years ago

http://www.w3schools.com/

pak• 13 years ago

> * This URL is relative, which means it will never actually reach its intended target (instead filling your web logs with this request)

It likely doesn't matter that the URL is relative. It contains a GUID to be unlikely to resemble any real URL, and it's clear enough that they are capable of deep-packet-inspecting all of your web traffic from the way this is already used, so they likely hijack any request to this URL path within their network to capture its contents, and return a 200.

I don't have Comcast so I can't verify, but it would be interesting for somebody to check whether that URL is masked for all Comcast users.

> That's right, this code causes every page served on your system to pop an AJAX request to the wrong URL every 5 seconds, as long as the tabs are open.

I can only hope that they infinitely hang requests to their special URL in the case that user is under the quota so that this is not true. But if it is true, and they are not perfect about masking the URL (edit: it seems like people below on this thread have seen requests to this URL in their server logs), this could be construed as a DDOS attack by Comcast on every owner of an HTTP server via their own customers.

aidos• 13 years ago

brokentone comments below that they've seen the urls in their production logs. I don't see it in any of mine but I'd be willing to bet that a company writing JS that bad would probably screw up the rest of the process too.

Surely a class action against Comcast is in order here? They're charging everyone for bandwidth they're not using.

kevincennis• 13 years ago

There are a lot of things in this code that make me think that it was written by someone for whom JavaScript is not their main language - but probably the most glaring example is the use of `new Object()`. I've never seen anyone with more than 3 days JS experience use the Object constructor over a literal.

Stratoscope3• 13 years ago

Oh, it's just awful. It's worse than just "not knowing JavaScript." This is code from someone who has no idea how to program:

    function Browser() {
        var ua, s, i;
        this.isIE = false;
        this.isNS = false;
        this.version = null;
        ua = navigator.userAgent;
        s = "MSIE";
        if ((i = ua.indexOf(s)) >= 1) {
            this.isIE = true;
            this.version = parseFloat(ua.substr(i + s.length));
            return;
        }
        s = "Netscape6/";
        if ((i = ua.indexOf(s)) >= 0) {
            this.isNS = true;
            this.version = parseFloat(ua.substr(i + s.length));
            return;
        }
        s = "Gecko";
        if ((i = ua.indexOf(s)) >= 0) {
            this.isNS = true;
            this.version = 6.1;
            return;
        }
    }

But it's not just these people. Code like this is everywhere! Here's what I ran into on www.safeco.com today (NSFL!):

    function setupAddress(frm, i, clickevent) {
        if (frm["USERESADDASMAILINGMAIN" + i].checked) {
            if (frm.NEWRESIDENCEADDRESS1.value == "" && frm.NEWRESIDENCEADDRESS2.value == "") {
                alert("Resident address must be entered for this option.");
                frm.NEWRESIDENCEADDRESS1.focus();
                frm["USERESADDASMAILINGMAIN" + i].checked = false;
            }
            if (frm.NEWRESIDENCEADDRESS1.value == "" && frm.NEWRESIDENCEADDRESS2.value != "") {
                FieldSwap(document.frmMain.NEWRESIDENCEADDRESS1, document.frmMain.NEWRESIDENCEADDRESS2);
            }
            frm["NEWMAILINGADDRESS1" + i].value = frm.NEWRESIDENCEADDRESS1.value;
            frm["NEWMAILINGADDRESS1" + i].disabled = true;
            frm["NEWMAILINGADDRESS1" + i].onfocus = frm["NEWMAILINGADDRESS1" + i].blur;
            frm["NEWMAILINGADDRESS2" + i].value = frm.NEWRESIDENCEADDRESS2.value;
            frm["NEWMAILINGADDRESS2" + i].disabled = true;
            frm["NEWMAILINGADDRESS2" + i].onfocus = frm["NEWMAILINGADDRESS2" + i].blur;
            frm["NEWMAILINGCITY" + i].value = frm.NEWRESIDENCECITY.value;
            frm["NEWMAILINGCITY" + i].disabled = true;
            frm["NEWMAILINGCITY" + i].onfocus = frm["NEWMAILINGCITY" + i].blur;
            frm["NEWMAILINGSTATE" + i].value = frm.NEWRESIDENCESTATE.value;
            frm["NEWMAILINGSTATE" + i].disabled = true;
            frm["NEWMAILINGSTATE" + i].onfocus = frm["NEWMAILINGSTATE" + i].blur;
            frm["NEWMAILINGZIPCODE" + i].value = frm.NEWRESIDENCEZIPCODE.value;
            frm["NEWMAILINGZIPCODE" + i].disabled = true;
            frm["NEWMAILINGZIPCODE" + i].onfocus = frm["NEWMAILINGZIPCODE" + i].blur;
            if (i != 0) {
                frm["EXPLANATIONVEH" + i].value = "";
                frm["EXPLANATIONVEH" + i].disabled = true;
                frm["EXPLANATIONVEH" + i].onfocus = frm["EXPLANATIONVEH" + i].blur;
            }
        } else {
            frm["NEWMAILINGADDRESS1" + i].disabled = false;
            frm["NEWMAILINGADDRESS1" + i].onfocus = null;
            frm["NEWMAILINGADDRESS2" + i].disabled = false;
            frm["NEWMAILINGADDRESS2" + i].onfocus = null;
            frm["NEWMAILINGCITY" + i].disabled = false;
            frm["NEWMAILINGCITY" + i].onfocus = null;
            frm["NEWMAILINGSTATE" + i].disabled = false;
            frm["NEWMAILINGSTATE" + i].onfocus = null;
            frm["NEWMAILINGZIPCODE" + i].disabled = false;
            frm["NEWMAILINGZIPCODE" + i].onfocus = null;
            if (i != 0) {
                frm["EXPLANATIONVEH" + i].disabled = false;
                frm["EXPLANATIONVEH" + i].onfocus = null;
            }
            if (clickevent) {
                frm["NEWMAILINGADDRESS1" + i].value = '';
                frm["NEWMAILINGADDRESS2" + i].value = '';
                frm["NEWMAILINGCITY" + i].value = '';
                frm["NEWMAILINGSTATE" + i].value = '';
                frm["NEWMAILINGZIPCODE" + i].value = '';
            }
        }
    }

alexanderh• 13 years ago

soooo is there a browser plugin to block stuff like this yet?

anExcitedBeast2• 13 years ago

noscript.

philwelch• 13 years ago

I love how the top comment expresses outrage, not that Comcast is injecting JS into people's sessions, but that it's poorly written JS.

ihuman• 13 years ago

This is Hacker News. We take our code seriously.

ryan-allen• 13 years ago

Nobody is allowed to see my code. It's not allowed.

nwh• 13 years ago

I wondered why I was seeing `checkBulletin()` in my logs.

esMazer• 13 years ago

canceled my services with comcast because of this, plus FIOS has an excellent offer around my area! :)

pmorici• 13 years ago

Comcast is such an incompetent company. I tried to sign up for service once and they charged me ten bucks to ship me two coax cables yet I was never able to get my service activated because I mistakenly thought my place was hooked up to cable when it wasn't and when I tried to call to correct this and schedule an installation I kept getting put on hold for a half hour before being given a message saying there was an error with their phone system and to call back. I mean seriously wtf.

nano111• 13 years ago

after 2 weeks, 3 techs coming to my house,5 chat conversations and multiple phone calls I finally have service... I don't really like this legal monopoly for cable companies... I would switch to ATT but right now they are about twice the cost...

mbreese3• 13 years ago

As a different point, my place was already pre-wired. I bought a cable modem from Best Buy, and plugged it in. It synced immediately. Then I went online and ordered service. They charged me $10 to send a self-install kit, but it wasn't needed I was actually online within minutes.

So sometimes their systems work...

I was very sad about switching from my other carrier (Sonic.net), but they ultimately couldn't deliver very much bandwidth. And Comcast was actually cheaper.

taf2• 13 years ago

for companies like comcast the easy solution is chargeback as a SaaS owner i hate to promote the idea of chargeback - but seriously they sting bad and could really act as a good wake up call for companies like comcast.

shuzchen• 13 years ago

I'm pretty sure Comcast aren't the only ones doing this. I had mobipcs for a while (when I just got new house, had to wait for DLS to get installed) and they injected js that tracked your browsing and replaced certain ads it found (as well as caused various errors because it wasn't written properly). I wouldn't be surprised if other companies did the same.

readme3• 13 years ago

Um, is this something that is always injected? I have comcast and I don't see it in any pages.

I'm guessing this is their clever way of reminding you to pay the bill when you're late?

Pay your bill or they'll stuff ugly JavaScript in your browser, you've been warned!

fletchowns• 13 years ago

It's right there near the top....

You have reached 90% of your <b>monthly data usage allowance</b>.

readme3• 13 years ago

Nope, I don't have it. Are you Canadian? Maybe it's a Canada thing? Doing it to tell you about your data allowance is a bit excessive, for sure.

tonyb2• 13 years ago

This is probably part of their "Web Notifcation System". They have a published RFC talking about how it works (RFC6108).

Using that system they can selectively notify customers. Like if they detect your system is infected with a virus. Or warn you your service will be discontinued if you don't pay your bill.

http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6108

STRML4• 13 years ago

Look at all the work that went into that RFC. Unbelievable that they couldn't get a half-decent developer to verify that the notification is coded well enough to even show properly.

tonyb2• 13 years ago

I agree. The entire concept is about trying to be less invasive in the web browsing experience (by adding a popup instead of redirect the entire web session) but that all falls apart because of crappy JavaScript.

ars3• 13 years ago

The real goal of this is for the copyright infringement notices they want to send. Which I'm sure they will deem "critical".

jsz0• 13 years ago

They are legally required to serve DMCA copyright infringement notices to maintain their safe harbor status.

anonymous• 13 years ago

My ISP has a similar system. Except it works like this: if your machine is detected to be sending spam, for instance, the next time you try to view a webpage you're served an information page that your PC is compromised, please fix it and click here to not see this page again next time. Your actual traffic isn't compromised, it's just redirected to let you know of a problem. I can't tell you what would happen if you got close to your data limit, since we don't have any.

tantalor• 13 years ago

Where is the Chrome extension to block this?

bdisraeli• 13 years ago

HTTPS Everywhere[1]. Using SSL certificates helps prevent man-in-the-middle attacks[2], such as this. Comcast wouldn't be able to read any of your traffic and insert js without spoofing SSL certificates.

[1] https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/https-everywhere/g...

[2] http://security.stackexchange.com/questions/8145/does-https-...

mrb• 13 years ago

This is just one more reason for using HTTPS everywhere. Doing so prevents ISPs from intercepting and rewriting HTTP traffic.

Shame on you, Comcast.

buddylw• 13 years ago

I'm considering going a step farther and just setting up an Openvpn connection to my Linode server.

ineedtosleep• 13 years ago

I've looked into the costs of VPNs on servers I own vs. a VPN service with unlimited bandwidth limits and the latter always wins. Setup time costs aside, VPN services usually have multiple regions you can connect to and are likely to have more reliable speeds.

This is, of course, if you trust these companies enough and [list of security implications].

ben0x539• 13 years ago

If some interns running a corporate intranet can get a transparent htts proxy, what's stopping an ISP from rewriting your https traffic?

sjwright• 13 years ago

Your browser, for one. What you describe is the very definition of a MITM attack, regardless of proxy structure.

Your bank, for another. Indeed there are far too many parties with an interest in keeping https secure, that you needn't worry about it.

kbhomes• 13 years ago

Because using Comcast using an HTTPS proxy to rewrite traffic means that your browser will expect data encrypted with Google's, Facebook's, Chase's, etc. certificate when it actually receives Comcast's proxy certificate. Every HTTPS site would prompt the user about an SSL certificate error.

yuvadam• 13 years ago

Comcast can just as easily MITM your SSL connections, for your safety of course.

But that ridiculous, right? Since everyone verifies SSL cert signatures...

augustl3• 13 years ago

They would either need the private key of the certificate holder (which they don't have), or a certificate signed by one of the roots installed on the system, which they also won't have.

I suppose the logical next step is that Comcast requires you to install a "Comcast Internet Helper" program that also installs a Comcast root certificate into the system so they can mitm anything.. But Firefox and Chrome would probably release updates mere hours later, blocking that cert from being used from those browsers.

audiodude• 13 years ago

They're probably just desperate because for some strange reason, people don't seem to be getting the alerts sent to their @comcast.net email addresses...

RKearney5• 13 years ago

I thought this code looked familiar!

Here's my writeup on it for whoever is interested

http://blog.ryankearney.com/2013/01/comcast-caught-intercept...

brokentone5• 13 years ago

Hey man, this thread really took off! Nice writeup here, if I saw that, I would have submitted that instead. I submitted this right before I left work, after noticing the requests on my server and a quick Google search (on the UUID) turned up your gist and not much else. As a web server, I was kind of trying to start some discussion to see if I was alone in seeing this and didn't expect it to get to #2.

augustl3• 13 years ago

Interesting side effect of not serving the entire blog post on the blog itself - the code in your posts won't be indexed by Google on your site, only on gist.github.hom?

davorak4• 13 years ago

Is there a downside about notifying the FBI of this? I encouraged the op to do so in another post, encouraged. If this was happening on a 56k modem over a phone line it would clearly be wire tapping.

I do not see any downsides to contact the FBI about the matter, if you think of any please let me know.

awj• 13 years ago

Has this been confirmed to still be happening? The guys blog post[1] states that this was on Nov 20th 2012. Anyone currently using a comcast account want to put down their pitchfork for a second and help verify this?

[1] http://blog.ryankearney.com/2013/01/comcast-caught-intercept...

dangrossman4• 13 years ago

Comcast only enforces data caps in two cities right now, so your testing pool is much more limited than simply anyone using Comcast. Ryan (the author of the blog post) lives in one of those two cities. A potential tester would have to be in either the Nashville or Tucson area, and have used over 90% of their bandwidth cap for the month.

RKearney5• 13 years ago

Hi awj, I'm the author of the blog post. As dangrossman said, Comcast only enforces the limit in 2 cities. I live in the Nashville area, so I'm affected. They just doubled my 50Mbps connection to 100Mbps so I will go over my limit this month as I have 2 more grace periods left. If it happens again I'll update my blog post.

davorak4• 13 years ago

Are there down sides to contacting the FBI about this? They in part exist to document and keep track of potential crimes(potentially correlate them over long time frames that may not be worth while to keep track of for an individual but can add great benefit to society at large when the burden and information is centralized.) This seems like it would fall under their definition of internet crime found on:http://www.ic3.gov/faq/default.aspx.

If there are not major down sides please file a complaint with the FBI, I believe the url is:http://www.ic3.gov/default.aspx.

I encourage you to explain

* your evidence that when accessing various websites they appear to be tampered with between the server and your computer.

* Your worry that it impacts your bill with Comcast as it seems to be eating up you bandwidth. An estimate of the amount of money being eaten up if you have reason to suspect it is a city wide occurrence how much money is lost for everyone across the city?

* If you have packet logs of these occurrences I encourage you to include them.

* Unless you have hard evidence that points to Comcast that is doing the tampering I would not accuse any party of responsibility.

* If you have concerned friends who can independently verify similar conditions, it would probably be valuable to have them file similar complaints, referencing each other where applicable.

philip12092• 13 years ago

This is why I run an always-on VPN

brianjyee• 13 years ago

Comcast is an awful awful awful company. Yet I pay them over $100/month. I hate them with a passion. I've never experienced worse customer service. If I could pay double the price with a different company for internet/cable, I would do it in an instant but I unfortunately have no other options.

smacktoward2• 13 years ago

Yeah, me neither.

The worst part is that once I was griping about the horribleness of Comcast on Twitter, and a Verizon representative chimed in cheerily to tell me to check out FIOS. Only thing being, it's been ten years since they first announced FIOS was "coming soon" to my neighborhood and it still isn't here yet.

Sometimes you don't know whether to laugh or cry, you know?

DigitalSea• 13 years ago

Some of the worse Javascript I have ever laid my eyes upon. Polluting the global namespace, checks for Netscape Navigator 6... It burns my eyes reading this. Did they actually hire a programmer who wrote this?

_conehead• 13 years ago

My ISP does something similar, but it's meant to inject ads: one ad that scrolls in from the bottom every two-three minutes (for ten seconds or so, and that can't be dismissed), as well as another ad that covers up ads that other websites serve up.[0]

I've now resorted to using a remote VPN for all of my traffic.

[0]: A reddit post in which I discuss it: http://www.reddit.com/r/self/comments/19zhl6/my_isp_is_injec...

davorak4• 13 years ago

I will encourage you like I have in several other posts, example https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5484850, at this point to contact the FBI. If this was happening over a 56k modem on a phone line it would clearly be wire tapping.

I do not currently see a downside, if you see one let me know.

aswanson• 13 years ago

The hilarious thing about this is comcasts ridiculously buzz worded job ads for engineers. It's like they just cut and pasted everything any manager read in a blog or magazine and pasted it to dice: http://www.dice.com/jobsearch/servlet/JobSearch?op=302&d...

AndyKelley• 13 years ago

- Regular, consistent and punctual attendance. Must be able to work nights and weekends, variable schedule(s) as necessary.

WOW.

- Other duties and responsibilities as assigned.

No developer in their right mind would apply for this job.

stavrianos• 13 years ago

This at least partially explains the quality of their code.

h2s• 13 years ago

    > Tasks
    > Consistent exercise of independent judgment and
    > discretion in matters of significance.

This one literally stipulates that you will be expected to think for yourself on a regular basis. Why on earth is this in there?

IheartApplesDix2• 13 years ago

Mobile carriers do this too. I see the exact same feature being provided on my Sprint line.

davorak4• 13 years ago

If this was happening on a 56k modem over a phone line it would clearly be wire tapping. I encouraged the op in another post, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5484850, to contact the FBI. If you see a downside to this let me know, but until I realize one, or have one pointed out I encourage you to do so.

IheartApplesDix2• 13 years ago

I was just blocking 1.2.3.4, which the inserted js used to download the rest of the "features". I have no reason not to report this to the FBI accept I don't really understand whats going on here so I wouldn't be a good contact.

If you would like to see the content of the script, I can show it to you, it's bit different than the one posted here.

miles_matthias• 13 years ago

I'm glad I'm not on Comcast anymore. Terrible customer service combined with anti-customer practices like this, in addition to the lowest cost/service value on the planet and I'm glad to be done.

We switched to CenturyLink and we're really happy. I'm regularly getting 35-40 Mbps for half the price of 6 Mbps on Comcast. It is a little unnerving to know that 40 is literally the limit of their DSL technology though.

vetrom• 13 years ago

To add to the old news litany: Saw this on Vodafone over in Germany a few years back. To add to the security litany: SSL. EVERYWHERE. Firesheep ends up useful again :)

That said, this was probably only noticed as quickly as it was due to its stupidity and intrusiveness.

IMO what should be championed for is good decentralized end-to-end security, something like opportunistic IPSEC / anonymous SSL everywhere by default.

Sure, there are holes in it you can fly planes through, but it's a world better than it being cost effective for whoever to inject and MITM everything.

I'm not even going to touch on the pros/cons of over-subscription and business models which rely on it. (IMO most do, at least implicitly, and I'm not sure how to normalize analysis of that.)

caf• 13 years ago

Any opportunistic encryption would simply be blocked by the ISP that wanted to do this kind of thing, so the clients fall back to plaintext.

yellowbkpk• 13 years ago

Has anyone other than OP actually seen this in the wild? None of the systems I know about on Comcast here in Chicago have had HTTP manipulated at all today. Maybe they're not doing it here because the 250GB bandwidth cap is "temporarily suspended"?

mbreese3• 13 years ago

This is the real question. We can laugh all we want to a out their crappy code, but what I want to know is where this code is actually in the wild. If I see this coming down my Comcast connection, I'm likely to cancel my service that day.

RKearney5• 13 years ago

If you search for the GIUD that's part of one of the URL's in the code, you can find other places online including someones "Top 404 pages" log. While not widespread (yet), it is indeed happening. This post was from last year, but this month Comcast bumped me up to 100Mbps so I will be purposefully reaching my 300GB limit to test if it's still in production.

brokentone5• 13 years ago

Posted this separate, but I'm seeing the following users/metros in my request logs

c-75-65-181-xxx.hsd1.la.comcast.net West Monroe, LA

c-174-52-141-xxx.hsd1.ut.comcast.net Provo, UT

c-69-137-179-xxx.hsd1.az.comcast.net Tuscon, AZ

c-76-109-127-xxx.hsd1.fl.comcast.net Miami, FL

cpe-72-225-230-xxx.nyc.res.rr.com New York, NY

c-68-48-154-xxx.hsd1.md.comcast.net Washington, DC

c-98-224-83-xxx.hsd1.ca.comcast.net Fresno, CA

c-66-41-214-xxx.hsd1.mn.comcast.net Minneapolis, MN

markdown• 13 years ago

This is the js my ISP (VodafoneFJ) injects into all web pages: https://gist.github.com/mark-up/5297830

It basically optimizes images and replaces all image alt text with text saying to hit CTRL+R to load full-versions of images.

I know that VodafoneUK and VodafoneAU do the same.

On the bright side, at least they respect the no-transform cache-control header directive.

dangrossman4• 13 years ago

I believe T-Mobile does this in the US as well.

nkorth• 13 years ago

Sprint does this too.

jacques_chester3• 13 years ago

I'd be interested in hearing from a lawyer whether this would constitute interception of or tampering with telecommunications. In a lot of places that's highly illegal except for installation/maintenance/repair, law enforcement or where it's been invited and approved.

rbanffy• 13 years ago

> where it's been invited and approved.

I bet the permission to do it is part of the ToS agreement.

jacques_chester3• 13 years ago

I suspect so. But depending on jurisdiction it may not be waivable. Or the ToS may be drafted in a way that doesn't cover this.

fluidcruft• 13 years ago

I wonder if there is some way to devise a website that implement a copyright protection technology that js injection circumvents.

hunvreus• 13 years ago

Something that we're used to see in China (China Telecom is regularly pissing me off with injected ads), but that I would not expect to see in the US. Though I seem to remember seeing such kind of practice once in San Francisco.

What are the legal recourses you have with regards to this type of forced advertisement?

bigiain2• 13 years ago

So, If I'm reading their javascript right, we all need to put a file on every website we can at "/e8f6b078-0f35-11de-85c5-efc5ef23aa1f/aupm/notify.do" with the text "43a1028c-7d11-11de-b687-1f15c5ad6a13" in it, and any unfortunate comcast user in their bandwidth-cap-limited areas will have Comcast's stupid alert box stay on.

For example: http://iainchalmers.org/e8f6b078-0f35-11de-85c5-efc5ef23aa1f...

;-)

fiatmoney• 13 years ago

If visiting a public URL is "accessing a protected computer without authorization" if the owner didn't mean to make it public, I would suppose that hacking my communications with a website in order to inject code into my web browser should be too.

intr1nsic2• 13 years ago

So this sucks, but its not as bad as many are making it out to be. In a previous role, I was forced to deploy an appliance that did this exact same thing. Its not a man in the middle, or traffic intercept with forged responses.

Most of the time these appliances act as a 'cache' device. They will sit some where in the network ( inline, out of band, or as a WCCP device ) that will answer common router cache lookups.

In the case of WCCP, User behind cable modem X requests www.google.com ( HTTP Non Secure Traffic ONLY! ) and the router asks the appliance, "Hey, do you have a cache record for this request from this user behind modem X?". At this point, the appliance will do a DHCP Lease Query for that IP and get Option 82 from the lease record. Most of the time this is the mac address of the Modem. Then it takes this Mac address and either looks up in an internal database or an external one to check if this user has a message 'waiting', IE: Over allotted bandwidth, billing note, spam or just BS. If there is a message waiting, the appliance will tell the router, "YUP, i've got it. Let me send back this small .JS response". From my experience, this small JS ( Even if it is horribly written ) will be returned to the user with some code in it that does another request to the website originally requested in a frame of some sort. Request is made again, but this time the "message" waiting for the user has already been delivered, so the initial process returns "Nope, nothing for that user" and the content originally requested is loaded upon the 2nd round trip. Its still your PC with a fake original response. I won't pretend to know how Comcast or Rogers does this, but I know one Vendor I have used did it this way. I fought it till I was told to put it in production or find other employment. It sucks, but if done correctly on HTTP Non Secure traffic only in a manner that is described above, I think its a better idea than products like procera or sandvine do which IS MITM forged responses. Hope this helps explain a little better what maybe going on in this situation.

intr1nsic2• 13 years ago

It looks like based on the code and reference to 'bulletins' this is a product from PerfTech ... http://www.perftech.com/bulletin_system.html

gcr3• 13 years ago

The easiest way to combat this is to use SSL. You should be doing that on your website anyway.

Another effective way of combatting this is to detect what's happening and add a "This ad was sponsored by Comcast:" message.

I can sort of see the intent behind this. I just wish they'd tell their customers about their service usage out-of-band, like sending them a text message or an email.

One part of me realized "OMG they're going to track which websites I visit by looking at the HTTP Referer!" But then I quickly realised that as my ISP, they already have access to that information anyway...

krichman• 13 years ago

This is felony computer tampering on a worse level than accessing a URL that is accidentally public but nobody will be fined or imprisoned for it.

wyck• 13 years ago

It would be nice if there was an easier way to find out ISP injections for the layperson who can't really use wireshark/proxy and data comparisons, or for technical people that just don't have the time.

This project had potential ( it detected torrent traffic shaping) but it seems to no longer be under dev. http://broadband.mpi-sws.org/transparency/results/

Also this is a good read and contains comcast traffic shaping info: https://www.eff.org/wp/detecting-packet-injection

ps. Who cares about the shit JavaScript, this discussion should be about detecting packet injection and shaping.

spmurrayzzz• 13 years ago

There is validity in scrutinizing the code quality as well.

I agree that the ethical discussion is likely the paramount concern here and should be discussed, but the code they're using floods the global namespace which in theory could actually degrade service for end-users (by potentially breaking commonly visited JS-powered sites that happen to use globals of the same name).

Its worth pointing out that it would take minimal effort to make this code not suck as much (wrapping it in a closure for a start). IMO it gives more context to the initiative on Comcast's part. No time, effort, or care was put into considering the ethical implications of this practice nor its practical effect on the end-user.

jakub_g2• 13 years ago

I live in France and I'm a customer of Orange. I was really surprised to see on my mobile, on Facebook (m.facebook.com - I've noticed it only there, but perhaps there are more pages like that) they're injecting a HTML with "Return to Orange World" link in the footer directing to orange.fr. Not sure if anything more though - I have a plain old mobile with Opera Mini.

I'm curious if they have some deal with FB to do it.

testtata• 13 years ago

It could be the fact that you have a strange combination of both an old phone and (what could be a customized) Opera Mini.

I have an iPhone at Orange and never saw this.

jakub_g2• 13 years ago

I've installed Opera Mini on my own, so it's not customized.

antihero• 13 years ago

Another reason to use SSL everywhere.

kevinburke2• 13 years ago

Not only that but it appears people are using Comcast as a DOS proxy http://blog.ryankearney.com/2013/01/comcast-caught-intercept...

jdavid• 13 years ago

This is either a bad april fools joke, or it might be related one of the following:

* ISP - 'six strikes' of content abuse

http://www.techradar.com/us/news/internet/broadband/six-stri...

* EBS - Emergency Broadcast System

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/blogpost/post/wheres-an-...

http://news.cnet.com/8301-19882_3-57321623-250/wheres-the-em...

brokentone5• 13 years ago

edit: I'm OP, not the content author. I serve a media website, which is where I noticed and from where my concern stems. Comcast users should also be concerned about this.

Just scanned my logs more fully and have serious concerns. As people have noted, this really does make requests every 5 seconds. My 404 page is currently 18KB, which means these users (who are being warned about their bandwidth) are being forced by their ISP to download extra web traffic from the site they're sitting on. For me that number is 1/3MB / minute and I'm seing users who sit around a very long time.

Also, this isn't restricted to the two metros Tuscon and Nashville people have mentioned. Here is a sample of hits I'm seeing (removing final octet from IP/hostname):

c-75-65-181-xxx.hsd1.la.comcast.net West Monroe, LA

c-174-52-141-xxx.hsd1.ut.comcast.net Provo, UT

c-69-137-179-xxx.hsd1.az.comcast.net Tuscon, AZ

c-76-109-127-xxx.hsd1.fl.comcast.net Miami, FL

cpe-72-225-230-xxx.nyc.res.rr.com New York, NY

c-68-48-154-xxx.hsd1.md.comcast.net Washington, DC

c-98-224-83-xxx.hsd1.ca.comcast.net Fresno, CA

c-66-41-214-xxx.hsd1.mn.comcast.net Minneapolis, MN

So what do we do about this?

betterunix• 13 years ago

"So what do we do about this?"

Use TLS, warn customers about a malicious ISP attacker their connection, set up an encrypted proxy/VPN service for people to use, etc.

gohwell• 13 years ago

brainjar! My go to resource for DIV positioning back in 1999.

jstalin• 13 years ago

Another reason to use an SSH tunnel or VPN for all traffic, combined with HTTPS Everywhere.

mweinbergPK• 13 years ago

Non-quality of code question, and sorry I haven't been able to parse this from the comments so far. Am I reading this correctly to mean that Comcast's method of alerting customers that they are close to their cap drives them closer to their cap?

jms703• 13 years ago

Comcast does this for good reason.

https://amibotted.comcast.net

Yes, the javascript is crappy, but no reason for their customers to be outraged. I don't know any other ISP that is helping out with the botnet problem.

tokenadult• 13 years ago

Ladies and gentlemen, this is why if you are hiring a programmer, you always ask for a work-sample test before making the hiring decision final.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5227923

Yes, the code sample suggests someone clueless about programming in general, even more than being clueless about the particular language of this program. So on what basis was the coder hired?

api• 13 years ago

Major web sites should sue for theft of service. They are modifying someone else's copyrighted content to steal their advertising revenue.

Also: https everywhere, now.

dspillett• 13 years ago

Do comcast users come from a recognisable range of addresses? If so I might have to add a warning to everything I output along the lines of:

"Your ISP (Comcast) adds terrible Javascript to the code of this page without our knowledge or permission, therefore if you have any problems with this application please contact their support line in the first instance and not us. While your ISP is modifying our code, especially while they are modifying it by adding such terrible code of their own, we simply cannot support you, sorry."

brokentone5• 13 years ago

No but their hostnames generally call out "comcast" somewhere therein. I've called out some affected clients elsewhere.

shahar2k• 13 years ago

I see a lot of discussion on the quality of the code, but not much about the fact that Comcast is modifying the content they are serving without informing their customers AKA the legality of the situation...

thisone• 13 years ago

if they just went to unlimited internet, they wouldn't need this thing.

marshray2• 13 years ago

The image_url variable references "constantguard/BotAssistance", which turns up in search results as a system used to alert customers of DNS changer malware.

teeja• 13 years ago

I don't grok why they'd even try to inject their code into a webpage you requested. Why not simply create a separate page that you see BEFORE, that you read and acknowledge receiving, and then finish sending the requested page?

Comcast injecting JS

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