A third hacker, James Robert Black Jr., 21, a.k.a., “Defiant” was sentenced in August to 4 months for his role in the prank, receiving consideration for helping the FBI build cases against his co-defendants and other computer intruders.

The three men hijacked Comcast’s domain name in May of 2008 — a prank that took down the cable giant’s homepage and webmail service for more than five hours, and allegedly cost the company over $128,000. Visitors to Comcast.net had been redirected to a simple page reading “KRYOGENIKS EBK and DEFIANT RoXed COMCAST sHouTz To VIRUS Warlock elul21 coll1er seven.”

A screenshot taken during the Comcast.net hijacking shows Defiant in control of the company’s domain names. (Courtesy Defiant)

As described in the indictment (.pdf) in the case, the pranksters got control of the Comcast.net domain with two phone calls, and an e-mail sent to the company’s domain registrar, Network Solutions, from a hacked Comcast e-mail account.

That gave them entry to the Network Solutions control panel for Comcast’s 200 domains.

In an interview the day after the attack, Black and Lewis, who then identified themselves as Defiant and EBK, told Threat Level that they didn’t initially set out to redirect the site’s traffic. Instead, they merely changed the contact information for the Comcast.net domain to Black’s e-mail address; for the street address, they used the “Dildo Room” at “69 Dick Tard Lane.”

Then, the hackers said, they contacted Comcast’s original technical contact at his home number to tell him what they’d done. It was only when the Comcast manager scoffed at their claim and hung up on them, that Lewis decided to take the more drastic measure of redirecting the site’s traffic to servers under the hackers’ control.

“I was trying to say we shouldn’t do this the whole damn time,” said Black at the time.

“But once we were in,” added Lewis, “it was, like, fuck it.”

In the 2008 interview , the hackers expressed some shock over the attention the attack garnered.

“The situation has kind of blown up here, a lot bigger than I thought it would,” said Black at the time. “I wish I was a minor right now because this is going to be really bad.”

The two men were ordered to surrender to the Bureau of Prisons on October 25.

They could have done worse. The probation office had recommended 41-51 months in prison for Lewis and 37-46 months for Nebel, based on federal sentencing guidelines and Comcast’s assessment of its costs in recovering its domain name.

See Also:

• Comcast.net Hijacker Gets 4 Months
• Comcast Hijackers Say They Warned the Company First
• Feds Charge 3 With Comcast.net Hijacking
• Comcast.net Hijacked, Redirected

Authors: Kevin Poulsen

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