Comcast's Xfinity hit by 'CitrixBleed' hack, 36 million customers' data exposed

Comcast, the parent company of Xfinity, experienced a high-severity vulnerability known as CitrixBleed which resulted in hackers making off with password data and other sensitive information from 36 million Xfinity customers. The company reportedly waited as long as nine days to patch its network against this vulnerability.

CitrixBleed, found in Citrix networking devices frequently used by large corporations, has been under mass-exploitation by hackers since late August. Despite patches being made available by Citrix in early October, many organizations, including Comcast, did not apply the patches in time.

Xfinity confirmed that hackers exploiting the CitrixBleed vulnerability had access to its internal systems from October 16 to October 19. However, the company was unable to detect the malicious activity until October 25. The breach resulted in the theft of customer usernames and hashed passwords. In some cases, customers' names, contact information, the last four digits of their social security numbers, dates of birth, and secret questions and answers were exposed.

In response to the breach, Xfinity is urging customers who have used the same password for other websites or apps to change all their passwords immediately. The company is also advising customers to be vigilant about potential phishing attempts. In addition, Xfinity will automatically prompt customers to change their passwords the next time they log in to their accounts and is encouraging users to enable two-factor authentication.

The incident has been reported to federal law enforcement, and Xfinity states that data analysis is continuing. More information in the official notice Xfinity sent to its customers.