US government to investigate FCC's claim that its comment system was hit with DDoS attacks

[William Gayde]

When the FCC put out a request for comments on net neutrality, they got a little more than they bargained for.

Late night TV host John Oliver did a segment on the issue and asked his viewers to post comments online. The FCC also received a massive amount of fake comments as well from bots and other ISP-backed groups. In the midst of this PR disaster, the FCC said it was the victim of a DDoS attack but provided no evidence or records to support the claim.

The US Government Accountability Office (GAO) has now decided to investigate whether or not the alleged attack actually took place.

The investigation was requested by Senator Brian Schatz (D-HI) and Representative Frank Pallone (D-NJ) back in August and has now been confirmed. The two congressmen claim that the FCC has not "released any records or documentation that would allow for confirmation that an attack occurred" and they are skeptical of the validity of the claims.

The FCC's comment system experienced downtime on May 8 which they blamed on multiple DDoS attacks. They described them as "deliberate attempts by external actors to bombard the FCC's comment system with a high amount of traffic to our commercial cloud host." Despite repeated requests to prove that the attacks occurred, the FCC was never able to produce documents backing up their claim.

The investigation will not start for a few months and will also take a while to be completed. This means it will likely not conclude until after the FCC has made its decision on net neutrality. Despite the outage, over 22 million comments were posted on the FCC's website. Removing all of the spam and form-generated comments, 98.5 percent of unique responders supported existing net neutrality legislation.

Permalink to story.

https://www.techspot.com/news/71430-us-government-investigate-fcc-claim-comment-system-hit.html

 

[gusticles41]

98.5%. Come on, govt. Start working for us.

 

[penn919]

98.5%. Come on, govt. Start working for us.

More like "98.5%, come one, people, Start voting."

Yes, I know FTC officials aren't elected, but the government officials who put them in there are.

 

[senketsu]

If voting actually changed anything, they'd make it illegal

 

[Kotters]

If voting actually changed anything, they'd make it illegal

Why do you think people are complaining about the Electoral College?

 

[wiyosaya]

If voting actually changed anything, they'd make it illegal

Actually, there are those who are trying to make it highly skewed anyway. IMO, it is almost the same thing since it undermines democracy.

 

[wiyosaya]

98.5%. Come on, govt. Start working for us.

It is not what Pai wants to hear. They want to hear that people do not support net neutrality, so they are just going to switch to their alternative facts.

 

[Master Yeti]

It wouldn't surprise me. In the Netherlands, an anti-piracy organization faked a DDoS on their own website. But the next day people forget about it, and the organization just gets away with it.

 

[senketsu]

Actually, there are those who are trying to make it highly skewed anyway. IMO, it is almost the same thing since it undermines democracy.

actually I watched a movie that morning and someone used that phrase (if voting could change anything they'd make it illegal) and it stuck in my mind. I vote except perhaps for city elections, but it seems a little removed from full democracy (the tyranny of the majority, there's another phrase for you all)