US Cable Hackers Sentenced To 18 Months In Prison

Two men accused of hacking the website of US cable operator Comcast were sentenced on 24 September to 18 months in prison.

The US Department of Justice said in a news release: “Christopher Allen Lewis, aka ‘EBK,’ 20, of Newark, Delaware, and Michael Paul Nebel, aka ‘Slacker,’ 28, of Kalamazoo, Michigan” had previously pleaded guilty to charges of “conspiring to disrupt service at [Comcast’s] www.comcast.net website on 28 and 29 May, 2008″. The statement continued:

Web traffic redirected

“Lewis, Nebel and co-defendant James Robert Black, Jr., aka ‘Defiant,’ were associated with the hacker group Kryogeniks. On 28 May, 2008 … [the group] used their hacking skills to redirect all traffic destined for the www.comcast.net website to websites that they had established. As a result, Comcast customers trying to read their email or listen to their voice mail were sent to a website where they found a message that read, ‘KRYOGENIKS Defiant and EBK RoXed COMCAST sHouTz to VIRUS Warlock elul21 coll1er seven.'”

According to the indictment, the group accomplished all this by altering Comcast’s DNS (Domain Name System) records, which were maintained by a domain registrar company. Approximately 5 million people per day connected to the Comcast website in May 2008, and the redirect caused losses to Comcast, authorities said.

The 24 September statement continued: “In addition to the prison time, US District Court Judge Robert F. Kelly ordered the defendants to each pay restitution in the amount of $89,578.13 (£56,587). Black’s case was transferred to the Western District of Washington where he was sentenced [in August] to four months in prison and ordered to pay restitution.”