Guy Busted For Selling Hacked Cable Modems

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How anyone could have thought this was a good idea is beyond me. We’ve all seen the hacked modem sites for years but, as amazing as this may seem, this guy has the honor of being the first person to face federal charges for it.

Thomas Swingler was charged Thursday in federal court in New York with trafficking in unlawful access devices for his online business cablehack.net. The site, still in operation, sells "pre-modded" Motorola Surfboard modems for between $38 and $58 that can be customized by the owner without a cable company's knowledge. Among other things, the user can set their own upload and download rates, and change the MAC address.
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the user can set their own upload and download rates, and change the MAC address
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This guy is my hero, well beside the stupity of advertising thing. :D
 
I'm so disapointed in myself for not knowing of this. I would love something like that, I just sort of figured that cable companies held that information and tied it to registered mac addresses.
 
My ISP makes you use their own modem. Otherwise, I would have bought one of these a long time ago.Too lazy to do it myself.:(
 
When I worked at Comcast a little over 2 years ago. All of your access information, your upload speed, download, etc were stored on the boot file on your modem. Now by a simple search of your MAC address they could see your modem and your boot file...

They could also see this by the node if they wanted to but the system wasn't very linear or user friendly, though I'm sure there were option in the background to attempt to catch / disable users who would use such a hack. The whole thing is, if you change your MAC address then your modem can reconnect as long as it doesn't "accept" any of Comcast's "You don't have an CHSI account" boot files...

I would hope that maybe I am wrong and that there was even more prevention software in the background of Comcast's network but I'm sure you won't be surprised to hear how archaic Comcast's infrastructure truly is...
 
I work for one of the big ones. We scan the network regularly for firmware versions, do firmware pushes and updates regularly.

You used to get a guy or two here and there with hacked firmware usually it's to screw with config packages and it shows up pretty quickly and is shutdown at the access level. Network security has been a priority for years.
 
Theres a lot more going on at comcast than you realize in the background. Many more tools in the last year have made it nigh on impossible to utilize one of these modems for an extended period of time. They will get shut down if they exceed their bandwidth limits longer than the "boost" phase of the download. If their MAC changes from whats on the account the modem will go into "walled garden" mode. Basically a suspend mode that prompts the user to download provisioning software. Now if we could get rid of cable data. THATS an archaic program :)
 
I wont explain the process for obvious reasons but yes we lock down at the MAC layer.
 
now it'll be interesting if hes prosecuted
those who posted in this thread working for cable companies..if you only knew
 
snekrz said:
Theres a lot more going on at comcast than you realize in the background. Many more tools in the last year have made it nigh on impossible to utilize one of these modems for an extended period of time. They will get shut down if they exceed their bandwidth limits longer than the "boost" phase of the download. If their MAC changes from whats on the account the modem will go into "walled garden" mode. Basically a suspend mode that prompts the user to download provisioning software. Now if we could get rid of cable data. THATS an archaic program :)
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Oh yea I remember the "walled garden" boot file. I worked there for close to 2 years before I found better employment.

It's nice to see that they have picked up the pace on the CHSI side, but yea Cable Data is an archaic system and needs to be replaced. Here in NJ the corps that we had and the sub corps within them, and the various differences in package codes was ridiculous... Not to mention Comtrac crashed numerous times and they had the nerve to remove the Task Manager from our abilities within the CHSI support department. :mad:
 
budzman: i hope you have a good dsl provider available, if you try running a hacked cable modem you'll need one PDQ
 
Simple way to get around the pushed mac updates and such on Comcast and Brighthouse networks.

Refuse to use their modem.

I use a modded Linksys myself, I avoid motorola surfboards for a reason. Their system is designed to detect surfboards not performing to spec, but it can't detect a non standard modem. Sorry but if I am paying for the service, I am not about to let them throttle my bandwidth and speed slower then what my cable can handle.
 
Sigma out of Russia sells hacked surfboard modems. I myself, being the paragon of virtue that I am, would never use such a nefarious device, much less 3 of them at the same time. I haven't been using 3 of them for 2 years either. I didn't pay $60 a piece for them. I won't say that they work really good and don't have any MAC address issues. I won't say that some come with a MAC address browser that will find MAC addresses on other nodes. As a matter of fact, I've never even heard of such devices at all. I don't even know why I'm posting in this thread. Wait... what?:confused:
 
this post was fake. Kevin Poulsen admitted he was wrong and the article will be removed soon....

Tom (MY FRIEND) isn't in any trouble and its all FAKE! ....
 
snekrz said:
Theres a lot more going on at comcast than you realize in the background. Many more tools in the last year have made it nigh on impossible to utilize one of these modems for an extended period of time. They will get shut down if they exceed their bandwidth limits longer than the "boost" phase of the download. If their MAC changes from whats on the account the modem will go into "walled garden" mode. Basically a suspend mode that prompts the user to download provisioning software. Now if we could get rid of cable data. THATS an archaic program :)
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Unless things have changed in the past six months, the walled garden is a joke. I have a Sigma 5100, I like using it because it lets me see more details when something is fubar with the network. I ordered Comcast service when I moved into my apt. Before they arrived to provision my MAC, I hooked thing up and magically had full internet. I realized I was still using hard coded DNS servers, set my adapter to full DHCP and then I got the please register page. The walled garden in Colorado Springs is nothing more than DNS poisoning(Yes, I was in fact on a walled garden config too, I checked the config name it pulled). I canceled my Comcast service three months later, after ordering QwestDSL (FTTN 12Mbit). Qwest is much faster, barely more expensive, and it doesn't slow down on weekends.
 
MaddogJew said:
Sigma out of Russia sells hacked surfboard modems. I myself, being the paragon of virtue that I am, would never use such a nefarious device, much less 3 of them at the same time. I haven't been using 3 of them for 2 years either. I didn't pay $60 a piece for them. I won't say that they work really good and don't have any MAC address issues. I won't say that some come with a MAC address browser that will find MAC addresses on other nodes. As a matter of fact, I've never even heard of such devices at all. I don't even know why I'm posting in this thread. Wait... what?:confused:
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All the info you gave almost makes me think you may have used one once. Just glad you didn't go that route even though the speed of a hacked modem is probably well worth it.:D

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Still confused about how three will help you though. Does using three modems at the same time triple your speed or something? I have never heard of anyone using more then one modem for the same connection. Can you inform me?

Thanks
 
J32P said:
All the info you gave almost makes me think you may have used one once. Just glad you didn't go that route even though the speed of a hacked modem is probably well worth it.:D

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Still confused about how three will help you though. Does using three modems at the same time triple your speed or something? I have never heard of anyone using more then one modem for the same connection. Can you inform me?

Thanks
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Well, if one were so inclined (not me, never me) one could run 2 instances of BT on 2 of their machines and experience no loss of latency on BF2 on the third machine. If one were so inclined, on private tracker sites (whatever those are) one could upload at over 400KBs and not effect traffic on his other machines, thereby getting huge d/l speeds (i.e. over 2MBs). Also, there is no such thing as network load balancing using a linux box, and one should never try such a thing. It goes without saying that anyone doing any of the things I haven't done would be breaking the law. Of course, it would be impossible for anyone to be caught doing such a thing as long as they were being discrete with their modem and not being a bandwidth hog during peak hours. If such a modem were detected by comcast they would be shut down immediately and they wouldn't be able to browse for a new MAC addy right away and get online within 30 seconds. I wish I could help you, but I have no knowledge of hacked cable modems from Sigma or how they work at all. Sorry for being a let down, I wish I could help you:(
 
Guys im the owner of cablehack.net .. I find this story untrue.. I just now heard of it today yet I was supposibly arrested? These modems are completely legal to sell. Its simply a firmware upgrade from one to another.
 
i also am the owner of cablehack.net buy more of my modems please.
 
So what do these modems do? Dethrottled a throttled (due to over usage) connection? Or do they give you faster speed?

Too bad DSL isn't as simple...
 
sfsuphysics said:
So what do these modems do? Dethrottled a throttled (due to over usage) connection? Or do they give you faster speed?

Too bad DSL isn't as simple...
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I've heard that the let you get free internet and a really good pipe. Hell, if one had basic cable ($19 a month where I live) then he could hook one (or more) up and run just fine. For years even!
 
Oh, and all BS aside, for Comcast to catch you, they would have to go physically house to house (and not just outside but an actual inside search) on the node they were looking at to find you. Now I don't know about anywhere else but the city I used to live in has about 250000 people, about 2/3 of which had cable... there are 12 nodes that service the entire town. It is cheaper for them to ignore the problem (as long as it doesn't get too widespread) then for them to catch who does it.
 
Why is hacking a modem illegal? You own the damn thing, do as you please with it.
 
yeah.. with the ISP's I've had, this was remedied quite some time ago. I used to have the Surfboard with modded firmware (CBLMoD), but ISP's caught on and rendered it useless with some sort of server side speed control. That was about 3 or 4 years ago. What the firmware did was take the pulldown config and modify it for max open connections and speed tier. You could also change qam settings, change mac addresses, change serial numbers, monitor the freq/power, change symbol rates, dhcp bypass, etc. It was pretty neat but didn't last long.
 
They give speeds faster than this... :p

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Just to let you all know tho, the charges against me are all bullcrap. Ive done nothing of the sort in those charges.. I dont know what to think regarding this.. Im being 100% honest here. I dont know how rarely this occurs where someone is charged and not even a BIT of the charges are true..
 
LOL,

I love all the comments on that site. Made up but everyone it looks like.... Too funny!
:p
 
Wow, I really want one of these now. I don't dl often but I do host alot of games and boy is the fing upload speed slow as heck on my comcast internet service.
 
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