Comcast's Incompetence Puts You At Risk

http://unixjunkie.blogspot.com/2008/10/comcasts-incompetence-puts-you-at-risk.html

by comatose_kid • 17 years ago

53 9 17 years ago

unixjunkie.blogspot.com

83457• 17 years ago

Reminds me of a story I heard a while back of a store with a few locations but only one credit card terminal. In order to process credit cards as needed they just submitted credit card info by instant message to the store with the terminal where an employee would process and respond with a confirmation message.

tptacek• 17 years ago

Backend applications that retail customers never see aren't secure. Film at 11.

tdavis2• 17 years ago

Maybe somebody should make the film. Because I already know all about it, and it is still ridiculous.

But don't play it at 11. That's where news goes ;)

ewoodh2o• 17 years ago

Wow...I just went through this last week. Definitely didn't think they'd be dumb enough to encrypt the applet but not the chat traffic. But I was a little sketched out by the fact that you go through this entire official ordering process on their website through which you provide all your contact details, then some low-wage support guy in who-knows-where asks for your SSN. I refused to give it to him, which meant I had to put down a $100 deposit. On my credit card. Which I had to type into that unsecured chat box.

As they say, it's Comcastic!

tdavis2• 17 years ago

Maybe this is just a result of being in the military and having my SSN on 10 trillion documents in various insecure facilities around the world, but I would give out my SSN way before my CC number. Especially in a chat application.

buugs• 17 years ago

You may be right in thinking that a cc would be used before a ssn would ever be but it is much easier to monitor cc transactions than usage of a ssn.

stoic• 17 years ago

You can change your credit card number (cancel the card).

You cannot change your SSN.

brown9-2• 17 years ago

Interesting that the frontend is a Java applet but it's posting to an ASP/ASP.NET url. Two technologies that you don't usually see a development team combine.

Smells like a bunch of contractors plugging a few random components together to just-get-it-working?

Comcast's Incompetence Puts You At Risk

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