Internet (Dis)service Support

A Convergys employee providing Internet support services to Comcast Corp. consumers no longer has a job, thanks to his own stupidity about his abuse of his access to consumer records.
And Comcast and Convergys are left searching jointly for a way to prevent such a security breech in the future, according to Convergys.
The worker, who went by the nom du gamer Sir Lagzalot, boasted a week ago on the Halo3forum.com about how he used his access to Comcast consumer information to find the identity of a kid who disrupted the technician’s gameplay on his home Xbox console. Seems the kid abused the game system’s terms of service and flooded the technician’s game console with information, knocking the tech out of the game he was playing interactively. After the tech used his technical knowledge to block out the offender and get back online, he warned other gameplayers that packet-flooding was an abuse of service and illegal.
When the offender made an obscene suggestion in response, the 22-year-old tech (who according to his forum profile is a criminology major!) went to work and searched Comcast’s Service Visibility Portal to obtain the other player’s name, address and credit information, according to his forum post. BroadbandReports.com first reported the post.
The technician called the gameplayer’s home and told the player’s father, according to the post, that his son was breaking the law and the offense was punishable by imprisonment and a monetary fine. He also indicated he was going to terminate the home’s Comcast Internet service for one week, for abuse of service.
The tech then boasted in his post that he could hear the son being beaten and the Xbox being destroyed. Sir Lagzalot even posted screen shots of the offender’s account, with specifics redacted, to prove he’d done what he said and to use as a cautionary tale for others who might use packet flooding to disrupt gameplay.
Convergys, one of the country’s largest suppliers of back office support and billing services to cable and other industries, said in an e-mail that company representatives could not discuss specifics of the investigation. It added, "The technician formerly supporting Comcast no longer has access to either the building or any Convergys, Comcast or client information."
"Data security is an issue that affects nearly every company, and is a top priority at Convergys. Convergys acts responsibly in securing the confidentiality and privacy of our clients and their customers, and responds with diligence and haste when someone’s bad acts create potential to compromise protected data," the statement read.
The game forum has also banned the worker from its boards. But the tech’s tale of records privacy abuse is still there.