Alleged Accomplice of Accused Cable-Modem Hacker Testifies Against Him
The alleged accomplice of an accused cable-modem hacker testified in court on Wednesday that the suspect taught him how to pirate cable service using hacked firmware and cloned MAC addresses.
Craig Phillips, a former business partner of accused cable-modem hacker Robert Harris, told a Boston jury that Harris taught him how to use hacked firmware to “uncap” cable modems and use the firmware with cloned MAC addresses to steal cable service.
Uncapping a cable modem allows the user to remove bandwidth filters imposed by the cable ISP, which can increase the speed of the modem and defeat any throttling or content filtering an ISP may try to do. Phillips has been given immunity by prosecutors for his testimony, and the jury has been instructed to regard his statements with healthy skepticism.