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Comcast says hackers stole data of close to 36 million Xfinity customers

Carly Page@carlypage_ / 4:45 AM PST•December 19, 2023

Comcast has confirmed that hackers exploiting a critical-rated security vulnerability accessed the sensitive information of almost 36 million Xfinity customers.

This vulnerability, known as “CitrixBleed,” is found in Citrix networking devices often used by big corporations and has been under mass-exploitation by hackers since late August. Citrix made patches available in early October, but many organizations did not patch in time. Hackers have used the CitrixBleed vulnerability to hack into big-name victims, including aerospace giant Boeing, the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China and international law firm Allen & Overy.

Xfinity, Comcast’s cable television and internet division, became the latest CitrixBleed victim, the company confirmed in a notice to customers on Monday.

The U.S. telecom giant said that hackers exploiting the CitrixBleed vulnerability had access to its internal systems between October 16 and October 19, but that the company did not detect the “malicious activity” until October 25.

By November 16, Xfinity determined that “information was likely acquired” by the hackers, and in December, the company concluded that this included customer data, including usernames and “hashed” passwords, which are scrambled and stored in a way that makes them unreadable to humans. It’s not immediately clear how the passwords were scrambled or using which algorithm, as some weaker hashing algorithms can be cracked.

The company says for an unspecified number of customers, hackers may have also accessed names, contact information, dates of birth, the last four digits of Social Security numbers and their secret questions and answers.

Comcast notes that “our data analysis is continuing, and we will provide additional notices as appropriate,” suggesting additional types of data may also have been accessed.

The notice doesn’t say how many Xfinity customers have been impacted, and Comcast spokesperson Joel Shadle declined to say when asked by TechCrunch. In a filing with Maine’s attorney general, Comcast confirmed that almost 35.8 million customers are affected by the breach. Comcast’s latest earnings report shows the company has more than 32 million broadband customers, suggesting this breach has impacted most, if not all Xfinity customers.

It’s not yet known whether Xfinity received a ransom demand, how the incident has impacted the company’s operators or whether the incident has been filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, as required by the regulator’s new data breach reporting rules. Comcast’s spokesperson would not say.

“We are not aware of any customer data being leaked anywhere, nor of any attacks on our customers,” said Shadle in an email to TechCrunch.

Xfinity says it is requiring that customers reset their passwords and recommends the use of two-factor or multi-factor authentication — which the company doesn’t require by default — for all customer accounts.

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Originally posted by lkdr1989:
Here you go, looks like this was reported a couple of weeks ago.

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Xfinity says it is requiring that customers reset their passwords ...

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Originally posted by konata88:
Interesting that the article is dated mid-Dec but just now receiving an email.... Seems like an email should have gone out first....

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Originally posted by konata88:
ETA: confirming that their website requires you to reset your pwd when you try to log in. Also, once you log in, there is banner that indicates the breach.

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What Happened? On October 10, 2023, one of Xfinity’s software providers, Citrix, announced a vulnerability in one of its products used by Xfinity and thousands of other companies worldwide. At the time Citrix made this announcement, it released a patch to fix the vulnerability. Citrix issued additional mitigation guidance on October 23, 2023. We promptly patched and mitigated our systems.

However, we subsequently discovered that prior to mitigation, between October 16 and October 19, 2023, there was unauthorized access to some of our internal systems that we concluded was a result of this vulnerability. We notified federal law enforcement and conducted an investigation into the nature and scope of the incident. On November 16, 2023, it was determined that information was likely acquired.

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What Happened? On October 10, 2023, one of Xfinity’s software providers, Citrix, announced a vulnerability in one of its products used by Xfinity and thousands of other companies worldwide. At the time Citrix made this announcement, it released a patch to fix the vulnerability. Citrix issued additional mitigation guidance on October 23, 2023. We promptly patched and mitigated our systems.

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Originally posted by nhracecraft:

Then they discovered that between 10/16 and 10/19 they were breached.

It would appear from their statement, that Citrix was out ahead on this, buy they (Xfinity) sat on the patch and did nothing for THIRTEEN DAYS, AND in the interim, the breach occurred. WTAF!

Can you say CLASS ACTION LAWSUIT?

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Originally posted by smschulz:
So the peanut gallery "Class Action Lawsuit" gets my > .

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Originally posted by nhracecraft:
^^^THIRTEEN DAYS dude!

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Originally posted by nhracecraft:
They knew of the problem/vulnerability, had the solution in hand, and did nothing!

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Originally posted by nhracecraft:
Meanwhile maybe the THOUSANDS of other companies saw this as a high priority, simply implemented the patch!

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Originally posted by nhracecraft:


They literally say they had the patch, and didn't use it for AT LEAST 13 days! While I'm not surprised in the least that they could fuck something up so royally, I am completely shocked that they actually put that in print!
Honestly, it's a bit shocking to see ANYBODY defending Comcast/Xfinity at this point, but hey what do I know!