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Comcast injecting JS

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Re: Comcast injecting JS

#161

Post by AndyKelley »

aswanson wrote: post #131

The hilarious thing about this is comcasts ridiculously buzz worded job ads for engineers. It's like they just cut and pasted everything any manager read in a blog or magazine and pasted it to dice: http://www.dice.com/jobsearch/servlet/JobSearch?op=302&d...

- Regular, consistent and punctual attendance. Must be able to work nights and weekends, variable schedule(s) as necessary.

WOW.

- Other duties and responsibilities as assigned.

No developer in their right mind would apply for this job.

Re: Comcast injecting JS

#162

Post by Selfcommit »

calinet6 wrote: post #135
bphogan wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're all over the place. People just starting out. It could've been an intern fresh out of college. It could've been someone who just never graduated beyond copy-and-paste-from-StackOverflow. It could've been written by a person who never did web development before and was just told to make it work. The little HN/Twitter/Reddit "awesome programmer" bubble is just that... a bubble. It's easy for us to forget that l…

"People just starting out." Ha, you give them too much credit. This code is from a 10-year veteran "consultant," probably charging over $200/hour, brought on by the Global Services company hired by the Consulting Agency that Comcast brought in to assist in completing the critical time-sensitive project as quickly as possible. It was also deemed a great success, and presentations were made about how effective it was,…

This is exactly who wrote this code. I nearly accepted a job with one of Comcast's major consulting partners. My first hint should have been 2 technical interviews in which they were impressed that I used linux... and couldn't tell me a thing about what their day to day looked like. "Oh it's always different"

When I was issued my company laptop, the software had been installed by hand (OS and all). I offered to setup an imaging system for them... but the "IT guy" from the "IT consulting firm" wasnt exactly sure what that was and needed to find out who to get approval from first...

Re: Comcast injecting JS

#163

Post by ancarda »

Phlarp wrote: post #151
ancarda wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The code on your GitHub, for the most part, seems fine. One thing I can say is don't use exec[1] if you can avoid it: $string = 'rm /var/www/Giftest/*.gif'; exec($string); While there's nothing * technically* wrong, it's platform specific and I think it would be better to use PHP's unlink[2] function. Also, sorry if this is wrong, I haven't looked at the regex but it seems your parsing YouTube URLs? Have you looked a…

would you be willing to discuss this further? No contact in your profile.

Sorry for the delay in getting back to you. Check your emails.

Re: Comcast injecting JS

#164

Post by jacques_chester »

rbanffy wrote: post #160
jacques_chester wrote: post #156

I'd be interested in hearing from a lawyer whether this would constitute interception of or tampering with telecommunications. In a lot of places that's highly illegal except for installation/maintenance/repair, law enforcement or where it's been invited and approved.

> where it's been invited and approved. I bet the permission to do it is part of the ToS agreement.

I suspect so. But depending on jurisdiction it may not be waivable. Or the ToS may be drafted in a way that doesn't cover this.

Re: Comcast injecting JS

#165

Post by rescripting »

callahad wrote: post #124
RKearney wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe Comcast hijacked NXDOMAIN DNS replies and replaced them with their own IP address, causing every non-existant domain name to go to their search page you had to opt-out of.

T-Mobile is currently doing this and does not allow for opt-out.

Originally I wrote a GreaseMonkey script to redirect me from their ad page to a Google search. At the time, it was better than nothing, but still not enough to keep me from dropping Rogers. YMMV, Last updated 2008: http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/30326

Re: Comcast injecting JS

#166

Post by hunvreus »

Something that we're used to see in China (China Telecom is regularly pissing me off with injected ads), but that I would not expect to see in the US. Though I seem to remember seeing such kind of practice once in San Francisco.

What are the legal recourses you have with regards to this type of forced advertisement?

Re: Comcast injecting JS

#167

Post by Achshar »

RKearney wrote: post #119
desigooner wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So did Comcast IIRC

I believe Comcast hijacked NXDOMAIN DNS replies and replaced them with their own IP address, causing every non-existant domain name to go to their search page you had to opt-out of.

That's rediculous. Airtel in India also used to do this. Annoying as hell. Miss-type the domain and type all of it again.

Re: Comcast injecting JS

#168

Post by sounds »

jacques_chester wrote: post #164
rbanffy wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> where it's been invited and approved. I bet the permission to do it is part of the ToS agreement.

I suspect so. But depending on jurisdiction it may not be waivable. Or the ToS may be drafted in a way that doesn't cover this.

Not to mention violation of the copyright of the website (and other rightsholders):

• derivative works

• public performance

• willful infringement

• GPL violation

• patent infringement

Re: Comcast injecting JS

#169

Post by bigiain »

So, If I'm reading their javascript right, we all need to put a file on every website we can at "/e8f6b078-0f35-11de-85c5-efc5ef23aa1f/aupm/notify.do" with the text "43a1028c-7d11-11de-b687-1f15c5ad6a13" in it, and any unfortunate comcast user in their bandwidth-cap-limited areas will have Comcast's stupid alert box stay on.

For example: http://iainchalmers.org/e8f6b078-0f35-11de-85c5-efc5ef23aa1f...

;-)

Re: Comcast injecting JS

#170

Post by stavrianos »

AndyKelley wrote: post #161
aswanson wrote: post #131

The hilarious thing about this is comcasts ridiculously buzz worded job ads for engineers. It's like they just cut and pasted everything any manager read in a blog or magazine and pasted it to dice: http://www.dice.com/jobsearch/servlet/JobSearch?op=302&d...

- Regular, consistent and punctual attendance. Must be able to work nights and weekends, variable schedule(s) as necessary. WOW. - Other duties and responsibilities as assigned. No developer in their right mind would apply for this job.

This at least partially explains the quality of their code.
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