Time Warner leaves 64,000 customers vulnerable

It’s pretty impressive that Time Warner Cable manages to provide universally dismal service and yet stays in business. Yay cable monopoly!

From their laughable customer support to the dysfunctional cable boxes, TWC is really one of the most hateable companies. And here’s just one more reason: A “gaping” security hole in their cable modem routers left approximately 64,000 homes wide open to cyber attack.

The hole was discovered by David Chen, who blogs at Chenasaurus, when he was doing work on his friend’s modem.

Chen writes: From within your own network, an intruder can eavesdrop on sensitive data being sent over the Internet and even worse, they can manipulate the DNS address to point trusted sites to malicious servers to perform man-in-the-middle attacks. Someone skilled enough can possibly even modify and install a new firmware onto the router, which can then automatically scan and infect other routers automatically.

He said he called Time Warner to report the problem, to which they said “we are aware of it but we cannot do anything about it.” CNN says there’s a temporary patch in place until the cable company can come up with a permanent solution.

Ummm … Thanks TWC.