Twp computer hackers who claim they took down cable giant Comcast’s (News - Alert) homepage and Web mail service overnight Wednesday expressed excitement and doom in an hour-long telephone conference with wired.com’s blog “Threat Level,” according a report on the company’s Web site today.

 

The hackers – who call themselves “Defiant” and “EBK” – reportedly said they expected to be arrested for their role in the attack on Comcast.

 

“The situation has kind of blown up here, a lot bigger than I thought it would,” Defiant, a 19-year-old man whose first name is James, reportedly told wired.com. “I wish I was a minor right now because this is going to be really bad.”

 

According to wired.com, Defiant and EBK, 18, belong to an underground group called “Kryogeniks.” The company says it’s interview was arranged by Mike “Virus” Neives, whom it describes as “an 18-year-old New Yorker who pleaded guilty as a minor last year to hacking AOL (News - Alert).”

 

Neives, also reportedly on the call, is also a member of  Kryogeniks.

 

The attack on Comcast’s Web portal made international headlines after the attackers left a strange message on the site that the company’s millions of clients use to get technical support, news and even their own e-mail messages.

 

According to postings at BroadbandReports.com that Yahoo’s news service cited, the front page of Comcast.net was infiltrated shortly before 11 p.m. last night and a note was left there saying that hackers had “RoXed” Comcast.

 

Comcast spokeswoman Jennifer Khoury said late Thursday morning that the problem had been solved, but some users were still unable to access Comcast.net and Web-based e-mail, according to news reports.

 

The unusual episode dovetails with increasingly bitter feelings between the U.S. cable broadband giant and some Internet users.

 

Two weeks ago, about a month after vowing to produce better network management techniques, Comcast and Cox Communications were found by the Germany-based Max Planck Institute for Software Systems to be slowing down BitTorrent (News - Alert) traffic at peak times.

 

The study used more than 8,000 nodes worldwide to test for BitTorrent blocking, according to a New York Times article.

 

According to wired.com, the hackers said they started attacking Comcast Tuesday, and eventually managed to get into Comcast’s domain management console at Network Solutions (News - Alert). The pair said they took advantage of a flaw at the Virginia-based domain registrar.

 

Not everyone believes them.

 

According to wired.com, Network Solutions spokeswoman Susan Wade said, “We now know that it was nothing on our end. There was no breach in our system or social engineering situation on our end.”

 

The hackers said they actually communicated with Comcast officials, according to wired.com.

 

According to the company’s report of the telephone conference, Comcast caught on to an administrative transfer and wrested back control of its site, which forced the hackers to attack again and regain ownership of the domain. Then, the hackers told wired.com, they contacted Comcast’s original technical contact at his home number to tell him what they’d done.

 

But a Comcast manager hung up on them, they said.

 

Wired.com confirmed the identities of the hackers through various sources and Internet names used in different applications. The company said it expected the hackers’ identities to be released soon.