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Comcast waited 13 days to patch its community towards a high-severity vulnerability, a lapse that allowed hackers to make off with password information and different delicate info belonging to 36 million Xfinity prospects.
The breach, which was carried out by exploiting a vulnerability in community {hardware} bought by Citrix, gave hackers entry to usernames and cryptographically hashed passwords for 35.9 million Xfinity prospects, the cable TV and Web supplier mentioned in a notification filed Monday with the Maine legal professional basic’s workplace. Citrix disclosed the vulnerability and issued a patch on October 10. Eight days later, researchers reported that the vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2023-4966 and by the identify Citrix Bleed, had been below lively exploitation since August. Comcast didn’t patch its community till October 23, 13 days after a patch turned accessible and 5 days after the report of the in-the-wild assaults exploiting it.
“Nonetheless, we subsequently found that previous to mitigation, between October 16 and October 19, 2023, there was unauthorized entry to a few of our inner programs that we concluded was a results of this vulnerability,” an accompanying discover acknowledged. “We notified federal legislation enforcement and carried out an investigation into the character and scope of the incident. On November 16, 2023, it was decided that info was doubtless acquired.”
Comcast remains to be investigating exactly what information the attackers obtained. To this point, Monday’s disclosure mentioned, info identified to have been taken contains usernames and hashed passwords, names, contact info, the final 4 digits of social safety numbers, dates of delivery, and/or secret questions and solutions. Xfinity is Comcast’s cable tv and Web division.
Citrix Bleed has emerged as one of many 12 months’s most extreme and extensively exploited vulnerabilities, with a severity score of 9.4 out of 10. The vulnerability, residing in Citrix’s NetScaler Software Supply Controller and NetScaler Gateway, could be exploited with none authentication or privileges on affected networks. Exploits disclose session tokens, which the {hardware} assigns to gadgets which have already efficiently offered login credentials. Possession of the tokens permits hackers to override any multi-factor authentication in use and log into the system.
Different corporations which have been hacked by Citrix Bleed embrace Boeing; Toyota; DP World Australia, a department of the Dubai-based logistics firm DP World; Industrial and Industrial Financial institution of China; and legislation agency Allen & Overy.
The identify Citrix Bleed is an allusion to Heartbleed, a distinct crucial info disclosure zero-day that turned the Web on its head in 2014. That vulnerability, which resided within the OpenSSL code library, got here below mass exploitation and allowed the pilfering of passwords, encryption keys, banking credentials, and all types of different delicate info. Citrix Bleed hasn’t been as dire as a result of fewer weak gadgets are in use.
A sweep of probably the most lively ransomware websites didn’t flip up any claims of accountability for the hack of the Comcast community. An Xfinity consultant mentioned in an e mail that the corporate has but to obtain any ransom calls for, and investigators aren’t conscious of any buyer information being leaked or of any assaults on affected prospects.
Comcast is requiring Xfinity prospects to reset their passwords to guard towards the chance that attackers can crack the stolen hashes. The corporate can also be encouraging prospects to allow two-factor authentication. The consultant declined to say why firm admins did not patch sooner.
