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.

Comments

Re:Net Neutrality

[SmarkWoW]

I'd just like to point you to a few links explicitly discouraging users from taking illegal actions against this:

ED Article Excerpts:
"1. DON'T FUCK WITH THE LAW- We want to first make use of the rights we have, censorship is violating our rights."
"Acting like an idiot and trying to DDoS them will only end with you being persecuted (and/or prosecuted), and your actions being used as a justification."
"This battle is one we have to fight legally..."
"DO NOT RAGE ON THESE PHONE NUMBERS, SIMPLY COMPLAIN ABOUT THE ISSUE!"

Insurgen Article
Excepts:
"Acting like a retard and trying to DDoS them will only end in them going [A QUOTE]"
"Don't try to DDoS or do ANYTHING illegal or legally ambiguous to AT&T. This is a corporation with more resources, manpower, and preparation than anything you script kiddies have ever dealt with. You will be caught and prosecuted. Go through legal channels and reverse this using legitimate means."

Those are just the ones in the windows I have open.

Obviously there is no way to force someone not to do something, but the intentions are to solve this without any "damages".

Thanks,
Smark
SpectralCoding

Re:Before we act too hastily..

[dgatwood]

You don't haul a girl off to jail if she was raped do you?

That's clearly an attempt to draw an analogy, so it really isn't as offtopic as it sounds. And yes, in the case of repeated rape of the same girl by the same person, you might. It's called protective custody.

In this case, though, AT&T almost certainly isn't doing it to protect 4chan's server. I'm sure they couldn't care less about that. They do, however, care about the huge zombie botnet on their network that is probably racking up huge bandwidth bills for them with their upstream providers.

Re:Freedom and privacy

[Anonymous Coward]

You have never been punished for exercising your freedom to speak by someone with more money or political clout than you have making you pay for disagreeing with them I see. Being able to be anonymous is basic to free speech.

Re:"Could this all be a hoax...?"

[FireFury03]

Well that makes no sense. AT&T should be taking no action unless somebody from 4chan calls them up and asks them to block the perceived source of the DDoS..

Sounds like you don't understand what's going on - please educate yourself.

4chan is being SYN flooded, various ISPs were getting a lot of collateral traffic from the resulting ACKs going back to spoofed IPs. Since those ISPs had nothing to do with either the attacker or 4chan, there was nothing they could do but pull the plug on the source of the collateral ACKs (4chan). i.e. the ISPs who blocked 4chan weren't trying to protect 4chan from an attack, they were protecting their own networks from the fallout.

Sadly, like you, the vast majority of users are clueless and won't investigate to see what is only going on. I'm sure there will be a kneejerk reaction against AT&T and the other ISPs who tried to protect themselves and everyone will make out that they are the bad guys.