Fuck both of these companies, but, how can it make sense to sue Citrix for this? The article says they released an advisory and patch for the problem six days prior to when Xfinity says the breach happened, so, it sounds like Xfinity neglected to install their software updates.
Comcast said it “promptly patched and mitigated its systems,” it said it later discovered that prior to the repair operation, between Oct. 16 and Oct. 19, “there was unauthorized access to some of (its) internal systems that (it) concluded was a result of this vulnerability,”
Where “promptly” means at least 9 days later. I understand patching production systems isn’t just a point and click operation, but vulnerability and patch management is a competency that Comcast is responsible for. The fact that they’re not named as a defendant in the suit is really, really weird.
The next day? OK, they’re responsible.
A week later, they have no responsibility left. Security holes happen, even in “highly secure” systems, because of how complex they are and how difficult it is to harden every possible edge case. But people not knowing the hole exists when you find and patch it isn’t really possible, which is why they give advisories that “this is serious, you need to install it” in the first place. Every day after the patch is shipped increases your risk that bad actors have used the new knowledge to find a way to exploit the vulnerability, not through any failure of the vendor, but by the nature of what security is.
A hole existing isn’t negligent. Leaving a known vulnerability, with a shipped fix, unpatched for a week on platforms that hold sensitive consumer information is. And it’s a decent ways up the severity scale of negligence, too.
