[thrwaway1985882]

> Something is off when support people aren't writing up the anomalies and escalating them.

What is described in the article is a fantastic hack. Given my organization's structure and skills, you'd need to send it straight past three layers of support and several layers of engineering before you find someone who'd be able to assemble a team to analyze the claims. We'd spend four figures an hour just to confirm the problem actually exists - then we'd all go "oh shit, how do we get in touch with the FBI, because this is miles above our paygrade."

An average cable internet user walks into a retail ISP location, sets a cable modem on the counter, and says "this is hacked". What is the probability you'd assign to them being correct? How much of your budget are you willing to spend to prove/disprove their theory? How often are you willing to spend that - remembering Cox has 3.5 million subscribers.

Friction is good. Hell, it's underrated! Introduce it to filter out fantastic claims: the stupid and paranoid are ignored quickly, leaving the ones that make it through as more likely to be real.