Outsourced Comcast Tech Goes Vigilante On Xbox Cheaters

By p858snake
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p858snake

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Outsourced Comcast Tech Goes Vigilante On Xbox Cheaters

A Convergsys support technician outsourced by Comcast may have gone a little overboard in a quest for righteous videogame vengeance. After getting packet flooded (a networking trick that essentially DDoS's a user's Xbox) by some fellow gamers on Microsoft's Xbox Live! service, the rep claims he used Comcast support systems to wage war on the perpetrator, a Comcast customer.

"I work for Comcast as a tier 2.5 support agent, which essentially means im one of the top 1% elitest agents," brags the tech in a post to the Halo3 forums. According to "Sir Lagzalot," he used Comcast systems while at work to track down the cheater using said elite skills:

I proceeded to input his ip address into a program we have called SERVICE VISIBILITY PORTAL -- SVP for short -- and it brought up his account, address phone number, daddy's credit card info -- the whole nine yards...I decided that since this kid was indeed involved in illegal activity I'd give his daddy a call.

If his melodramatic post is to be believed (which we have no way to confirm), his call to the father resulted in the Xbox live cheater getting a beating and his Xbox getting smashed with a hammer:

well the father was furious, not at me however he assured me he would take care of the problem... the father began to yell at his son, i then heard a loud smack, and then sobbing, and then cracking noise as if something was breaking..it then occured to me that the father had just beat the sh.t out of his kid, and the cracking noise was the sound of a hammer on an xbox , i decided that being the self indulgent ****** i am, i wanted more...the father put the son on the phone, still sobbing i might add..and i said to him.."do you know who this is??" he answered "no"..i said "remember that guy u cheated some 20-30 minutes ago and i said u would pay??, well guess what son...u just did."

To support his story, the tech in question posted these two screenshots (1)(2) of the internal Comcast tools he supposedly used to enact his revenge. The support rep then brags about being able to terminate user accounts at any time:

i basically added these two pics for the non believers...and YES I can powercycle "shut off your modem" and lag you out of matchmaking as well...let this stupid little boy be a lesson to u all, dont flood my ip, or anyone elses...because if you plan on doing so i will cancel your service and you WILL have to find an new isp which can mean up to 500$ in installation charges, and for many of you comcast is the ONLY isp in your area...so let me rephrase this..IS IT WORTH IT????

With this power didn't come the wisdom to avoid using a real name before publicly bragging about abusing Comcast support systems for personal reasons. As a result, here's the Myspace page (first made private, then deleted since our report was first published -Ed.) and some photos of one twenty-year-old Mark Ribeiro of Canada. Ironically, he's a third year Criminology major.

While nobody likes a cheater, nobody likes having their personal ISP information accessed for vendettas by outsourced Canadian labor, either. Or at least you'd think so. Not one post in the ten-page original thread so much as suggested it might have been a dumb idea. Several called Ribeiro a hero. In other posts (3) by Ribeiro on the Halo 3 Forums website, he jokes about giving up user credit card numbers.

I can get anyones creditcard number by your ip address if u have comcast and are in my party :p I know your home address zipcode, email accounts as well...oh ya, and best part is i can restart your modem with a push of a button...so dont **** me off :p

Assuming his claims of privacy abuse, illegal dissemination of customer information and general anarchy are true, we know he's truly wandered off the Comcast reservation when he starts advocating BitTorrent use:

torrents torrents torrents..start off by going to ww.utorrent.com installing that program, then go to mininova.org and download anything u want from there. utorrent is the program u use to DL.

Comcast, for one, isn't laughing.

"We have identified the person who created this inappropriate post as an employee of Convergys, a third-party vendor who provides technical customer support for Comcast customers," Comcast spokesperson Jenni Moyer tells us. Moyer calls the tech's behavior "completely unacceptable," given he ignored proper protocols for reporting network abuse. If his story is true, he potentially ran afoul of several laws as well.

"We've contacted Convergys to demand that he be immediately removed from performing any work for Comcast and that they conduct a thorough investigation and take appropriate disciplinary action," Moyer says.

Links:

Source: Broad Band Reports

1. Screenshot #1

2. Screenshot #2

3. Forum Post: Secrets of your job and workplace. (Halo3 Forum)

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ruterger

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If any of the Admins at my work did anything like this using our elevated security clearances they would be in court faster than they could say "KICK THE HACK."

Jeez man, it's Xbox Live. You kinda gotta think that this dumb kid was waiting for a reason to abuse his power for a while, otherwise this is totally a fakepost. I believe the fact that the dumbass is a Criminology major though, those kids are some of the roughest characters at my state college. From my experience they are either kids who were bullied too much and want power so they can flex their muscles (the kid in the OP seems to fall under this) or they are guys with criminal backgrounds just trying to refine their methods and "get inside the system" as a way to get around it.

But what the hell does it matter what I think! :D The kid in the OP should never be given power ever again. And he should also have all his achievements locked on Xbox Live.

Veteran

Ash

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I work for Comcast as a tier 2.5 support agent, which essentially means im one of the top 1% elitest agents," brags the tech in a post to the Halo3 forums.

Guess he isn't THAT elite, bragging about crimes using on sites that contain he personal information... duh.

Imagine if these tech support guys put in that amount of effort into helping out the customers...

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