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AT&T Blocks Part of 4chan
holdenkarau writes "Several news sources (Mashable, The Inquistr, etc.) are reporting that AT&T is blocking img.4chan.org in the southern United States. That server is used for the infamous /b/ board (the home of anonymous). TechCrunch calls the decision to block 4chan 'stupid,' noting that they may have 'opened perhaps the most vindictive, messy can of worms.' The Inquisitr suggests that 'The global internet censorship debate landed in the home of the free.' moot (who runs 4chan) asks users to call AT&T, while some others suggest more drastic action (like cutting AT&T fiber)." Update: 07/27 09:23 GMT by T : Readers' comments below suggest that a) the purpose of the block was to curtail the effects of a serious DDoS attack and b) that the block has now been lifted, at least for some regions.
http://www.merit.edu/mail.archives/nanog/msg19609.html
The president of unWired (a much more reputable ISP) has also blocked the same server. A DDoS was apparently attacking said server which wast travelling over both lines. According to this post, the block was due solely to stop the DDoS.
As of 1am CST, it looks like the block is beginning to be lifted : http://encyclopediadramatica.com/AT%26T_Blocks_4chan#THIS_JUST_IN I can confirm access to img.4chan.org open from the Austin/South Texas area now, whereas it wasn't about an hour ago.
- Aetheral Research -
The block is gone. It was for 4chans own good. They have been DDoSed for weeks. AT&T just stopped access for a short bit. Settle the heck down.
I have mod points, but I'm not using them, because there's no "-1 polite but very, very wrong" option.
To be more specific, I laughed pretty hard at "Anonymous is trying to fight this peacefully, they're not going to be DDoSing any DNS servers, backbone routers, or the like." They're not one person, and they're not a body directed by an individual, and no one controls what the assholes do, so the best you can do is "Some people are urging others not to, and they may or may not care". Good luck with that ;-)
Posting something in the likes of asking your audience to sabotage the network infrastructure.
Funny how some stuff gets rushed to the front page, I don't think Digg was gullible enough to get that even close to front page.
So to stop a DDoS attack on a server, they remove any and all access to that server? Am I the only one seeing the irony here?
The post you responded to is misleading. According to this: http://img193.imageshack.us/img193/2523/1248672053880.png, this was an ACK attack, which causes problems not only for the directly attacked host, but for other users as well.
Ordinarily, a TCP connection is set up when you send a SYN packet to a website, such as 4chan, and then 4chan responds with a ACK, and then you respond again with a SYN-ACK.
Here is how an ACK attack works. I, the attacker, will send a SYN packet to 4chan, but I am pretending to be you, or your IP address. 4chan then sends an ACK packet to you, excepting a SYN-ACK in response. However, you did not initiate the connection, so you send a RST back to 4chan (or nothing at all, depending on your firewall settings).
Then I do it again. And again. I effectively flood both you and 4chan with meaningless traffic. Your traffic problems are even worse, because if you have a firewall blocking the RST packets, then 4chan will send you 4 ACK packets (depending on configuration) for every SYN packet I send them.
In this case, AT&T and other ISPs decided that the simplest solution to ending this DOS against their users was to block packets to and from 4chan (or a specific part of 4chan).
I think you're confusing what you want to see happen with what actually will. Contrary to popular belief, most of the people over at 4chan aren't terrorists, I very much doubt they'll do anything IRL that might get them into serious legal trouble. Even if the chance of being caught is next to nothing, cutting someone's fiber is a few steps beyond what they normally do. Some of the smarter people there have already realized the best way to fight this is through legal means, calling their support lines, writing them, getting the story to various news organizations etc.
Though it doesn't help that most of 4chan is inaccessible right now, due to (I would guess) another DDoS attack.
Murphey's fighting Occam, and we're in the stands.
According to http://status.4chan.org/
"Cogent Communications has joined the club-they're now blocking all of 4chan. I can't even access the site at this point. We're working on it..."
So the site isn't down, in the sense that the servers are still running, and its not a DDOS attack but simply a denial of service by the ISPs/Backbones needed to access it. Net Neutrality anyone?...
The "Anonymous" thing on imageboards is more of a historical accident than anything, it was certainly never intended to conceal criminality (and doesn't, logs are kept and mods cooperate with the authorities like every other admin.) It has been retained because, at its best, it produces a unique and positive atmosphere. Posts are judged on CONTENT rather than the user's postcount, how much mod penis they have sucked etc. The very idea of censorship of anything not illegal becomes silly, hence bizarre topics offensive to most "normal" forum users can be discussed. Trolling and abuse of other users is of course rampant, but it's mostly good natured and the users wouldn't want it any other way.
I can confirm that img.4chan.org and www.4chan.org are unreachable from my home DSL (AT&T/Yahoo in Northern California). Everything works fine once I have routed 207.126.64.0/24 through OpenVPN over a non-AT&T network.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
The issue was reported on Reddit.com 16 hours ago. At no time, apparently, was access to img.4chan.org slow. Also, at present the IP address 207.126.64.181 connects directly to 4chan.org, as it should.
So, AT&T, is not blocking img.4chan.org, the company is only blocking some of its users. Check 4chan status. Quote: "UPDATE: Some coverage on TechCrunch, Digg, reddit, and Google News. Also, note that AT&T has yet to contact us."
Actually it surprises me that they haven't been labeled a terrorist group yet
Actually, they have
"It's come to our attention that AT&T is filtering/blocking img.4chan.org (/b/ & /r9k/) for many of their customers. There is no remedy at this time.
If you've been affected, I would advise you call or write customer support and corporate immediately.
UPDATE: Some coverage on TechCrunch, Digg, reddit, and Google News. Also, note that AT&T has yet to contact us.
by moot @ 6:41 PM "
Anonymous has an interesting, inconsistent filtering mechanism for the causes it chooses to champion (the only consistent cause that will be taken up is if someone acts against 4chan or /b/ itself). There's people who post asking for anonymous' help on a daily basis, which are met with replies of "(anonymous or /b/) is not your personal army". Any given incident is likely to feature entirely different groups of individuals, with entirely different ranges of skills.
YES. But I'm guessing this is not the whole story:
... Unfortunately, as an unintended consequence of the method used, some Internet users received errant traffic from one of our network switches. A handful happened to be AT&T customers."
But now 4chan's founder, Moot, has admitted the whole thing was kind of his fault.
"For the past three weeks, 4chan has been under a constant DDoS attack," Moot wrote in an afternoon update. "We were able to filter this specific type of attack in a fashion that was more or less transparent to the end user.
moot has posted the details on status.4chan.org.
Basically he confirms all the speculation that AT&T blocked 4chan because of ACK bouncebacks from a DDOS. Real /b/tards probably already had off-network proxies at the ready to deal with it.
Also, being on AT&T and unable to access 4chan doesn't necessarily mean that it's been blocked. 4chan is up and down all the time, because they're under constant DDOS attacks, at pretty much all times, from various sources. It seems that DDOSing 4chan is a basic holding pattern for botnets that aren't otherwise occupied.
Here's what happened:
For the past three weeks, 4chan has been under a constant DDoS attack. We were able to filter this specific type of attack in a fashion that was more or less transparent to the end user.
Unfortunately, as an unintended consequence of the method used, some Internet users received errant traffic from one of our network switches. A handful happened to be AT&T customers.
In response, AT&T filtered all traffic to and from our img.4chan.org IPs (which serve /b/ & /r9k/) for their entire network, instead of only the affected customers. AT&T did not contact us prior to implementing the block. Here is their statement regarding the matter.
In the end, this wasn't a sinister act of censorship, but rather a bit of a mistake and a poorly executed, disproportionate response on AT&T's part. Whoever pulled the trigger on blackholing the site probably didn't anticipate [nor intend] the consequences of doing so.
We're glad to see this short-lived debacle has prompted renewed interest and debate over net neutrality and internet censorshipâ"two very important issues that don't get nearly enough attentionâ"so perhaps this was all just a blessing in disguise.
Aside from that, I'll also add that there is some big news due later this week. Keep an eye on the News page, Twitter, and global message for updates.
As always, I can be reached at moot@4chan.org.
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PS: If any companies would like to hook us up with some better hardware, feel free! The architecture we've got powering this large and influential beast is really quite embarrassing. ( ._.)
Legalize recreational marijuana. Seriously.