Cyber-crew claims it cracked American cableco, releases terrible music video to prove it

A cyber-crime ring calling itself Arkana has made a cringe music video to boast of an alleged theft of subscriber account data from Colorado-based cableco WideOpenWest (literally, WOW!)

The video features gloomy music plus narration and text in Russian that claims – which screenshots of what looks like compromised internal WOW! systems – details on 403,000 customers, including their usernames, passwords, partial credit card details, and email addresses, were pilfered. Login histories, modem types, and even the questions and answers used to re-establish user identity were also apparently pinched.

The extortionists say WOW! – said to be the eighth largest cable operator in America – has until Friday to negotiate a ransom payment. Failure to do so will see Arkana sell what's said to be the stolen info to the highest bidder or leak the trove itself. If that happens, WideOpenWest will be aptly named.

Like many criminal gangs, Arkana has tried ...