Slashdot Mirror
FCC Says It Was Victim of Cyberattack After John Oliver Show (thehill.com)
On Sunday night, John Oliver urged his viewers to visit a website called "GoFCCYourself," which redirects users to a section of the FCC site where people can comment on the net neutrality proceeding. As a result, the FCC's site temporarily crashed. Now, it appears that the FCC is claiming its website has hit by a cyberattack late Sunday night. The Hill reports: "Beginning on Sunday night at midnight, our analysis reveals that the FCC was subject to multiple distributed denial-of-service attacks (DDos)," FCC chief information officer David Bray said in a statement Monday.
"These were deliberate attempts by external actors to bombard the FCC's comment system with a high amount of traffic to our commercial cloud host." The FCC's comments site went down in 2014 after the first time Oliver rallied his audience in support of net neutrality. In that case, it was widely believed the site went down because of the amount of traffic generated in the wake of Oliver's show. But Bray on Monday said that this recent instance was caused by a cyberattack and not a flood of people trying to give input. "These actors were not attempting to file comments themselves; rather they made it difficult for legitimate commenters to access and file with the FCC," he said.
The Federal /Communications/ Commission could not handle the volume of communications they were receiving?
Brilliant. And these people are supposed to be regulating the internet...
Remember when people used to call this phenomenon Slashdot Effect?
On a more serious note, is the Trump Administration now going to call Slashdot Effect an "attack," and if so, how is this not a sign of them ramping up the authoritarianism?
Finding God in a Dog
saying they were attacked instead of the obvious truth (that they were overwhelmed by demand) is the kind of thing I'd expect from the Iraqi ministry of information, not the US Government.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Remember when people used to call this phenomenon Slashdot Effect?
On a more serious note, is the Trump Administration now going to call Slashdot Effect an "attack," and if so, how is this not a sign of them ramping up the authoritarianism?
the FCC is not the same thing as the Trump administration. They are independent and can't have more than 3/5 of their commissioners coming from the same party, and they are nominated for terms longer than the president's.
Doesn't mean they are competent. But it's not Trump.
lucm, indeed.
Public to FCC: We like Net Neutrality
FCC to Trump: A lot of people like Net Neutrality
Trump to Putin: Too much pushback from public on our plan to gut Net Neutrality.
Putin to Hackers: Kill their network.
Hackers to FCC: DoS DoS DoS DoS DoS DoS DoS DoS..
The FCC isn't saying accusing John Oliver of launching a cyber attack, they're same some third party launched an attack to stop John Oliver's audience from being able to leave comments.
Except that comedy news shows actually tend to be rather intelligent and their humor is often quite smart. And the shows I watch seem to make fun of politicians on all sides. It's entertaining as well as thought-provoking. Anything that can shed light on the dark places using humor (as in actual humor) is a very good thing indeed.
I think, though, that some powerful figures in this world really don't like humor. Maybe because humor itself dispels fear, and fear is what some are trying to pedal for whatever reason.
Ever think they only plan for the 1 percent, and never for the 99 percent?
FCC works for Russia.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
saying they were attacked instead of the obvious truth (that they were overwhelmed by demand) is the kind of thing I'd expect from the Iraqi ministry of information, not the US Government.
Waitaminute...
Didn't we just hear a raft of comments about how the left is evidence-based, using the scientific method in all that?
Something about the EPA replacing half the scientists on a policy board with industry experts?
How is labelling something an "obvious truth" with no evidence to the contrary any different from "there are no facts any more"?
The *very probable* explanation is that someone heard John Oliver's screed, realized that many people were going to post opinions to the FCC website, and DDOS'd the site to prevent these people from registering an opinion.
Of all the stupid things people say that are attacks on democracy, this one actually *is* an attack on democracy.
A DDOS to prevent public feedback is much more serious than the base issue, and might become more prevalent in the future.
Perhaps we should be discussing that.
checking out the comment section as suggested on the show for an automated botnet DDOS attack kind of just paints the FCC leadership as technoramouses (contraction of "technology ignoramous").
Just the kind of duffoons you want deciding on tech regulation policy.
"The Trump Administration - Preparing America for a Knowledge Freedom Economy"
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
Maybe while John Oliver was telling people to submit their comments to the FCC en masse, some group that didn't want the people's opinion to get through to the FCC simultaneously launched a DDoS attack on their site...it's possible.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
"These actors were not attempting to file comments themselves; rather they made it difficult for legitimate commenters to access and file with the FCC,"
And so it is important to note, as difficult as it has been for legitimate commenters, that the 180,000-plus comments that they have received, as of this writing, are presumably a small fraction of the actual number of people who attempted to comment on the issue.
"It's not that there's massive interest in this key issue, it's that a few individuals are simulating massive interest..."
Maybe you're convincing yourselves?
Requiem for the American Dream
Seriously, the new guy at the head of the FCC said there was never any example of ISPs depriotizing traffic to services in favor of their own stuff... Well the crap that happened with Netflix, where a few ISPs in the US throttled the access speed of Netflix to an unwatchable level, until they came to a paid "agreement" and suddenly, at the flip of a switch, Netflix loaded just fine... As if we are to believe they truly allocated "more" bandwidth to Netflix instead of just "giving it the normal amount of bandwidth it should've had in the first place".
The FCC, immediately after Mr. Trump's election, cancelled their existing plans and awaited new dirction from Mr Pai. They' were designed to be independent, but aren't.
davecb@spamcop.net
They intentionally misrepresented (aka lied) the facts, because we now live in a fact-free country. They are manipulating their data because the FCC chairman doesn't want net neutrality because he a shilling for Verizon et al.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
This administration doesn't care what you think. Whenever people speak out about something the government is doing, they deny people are upset and go ahead and do it anyway. Don't like the ACA replacement? Wait a couple of weeks, then say you've fixed it and rush it through before anyone reads it. Don't like the fact that they're selling the internet off to Comcast? It was just a DDOS attack. Nobody actually complained. This is so typical of Republicans...they claim the open market will fix everything, then they auction off a monopoly to the highest bidder.
Actually we just want them to pay for the medical care, and use their leverage to control costs, just like almost every other modern country on the planet. Providers should remain in the private sector.
I don't always use unix-like operating systems; but when I do, I prefer FreeBSD.
Good comedians are self-deprecating, at least on-stage. Trump is so thin-skinned, it's rather amazing it's not completely transparent.
When you're a narcissistic psychopath, most shit just ain't that funny.
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
Doesn't mean they are competent. But it's not Trump.
Is that why they are massively backpedaling net neutrality at the behest of their new boss?