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FCC Admits It Was Never Actually Hacked (techcrunch.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: The FCC has come clean on the fact that a purported hack of its comment system last year never actually took place, after a report from its inspector general found a lack of evidence supporting the idea. Chairman Ajit Pai blamed the former chief information officer and the Obama administration for providing "inaccurate information about this incident to me, my office, Congress, and the American people." It was so galling to everyone looking for answers that the GAO was officially asked to look into it. The letter requesting the office's help at the time complained that the FCC had "not released any records or documentation that would allow for confirmation that an attack occurred, that it was effectively dealt with, and that the FCC has begun to institute measures to thwart future attacks and ensure the security of its systems." That investigation is still going on, but one conducted by the FCC's own OIG resulted in the report Pai cites.
Pai's statement was issued before the OIG publicized its report, as one does when a report is imminent that essentially says your agency has been clueless at best or deliberately untruthful at worst, and for more than a year. To be clear, the report is still unpublished, though its broader conclusions are clear from Pai's statement. In it he slathers Bray with the partisan brush and asserts that the report exonerates his office: "I am deeply disappointed that the FCC's former [CIO], who was hired by the prior Administration and is no longer with the Commission, provided inaccurate information about this incident to me, my office, Congress, and the American people. This is completely unacceptable. I'm also disappointed that some working under the former CIO apparently either disagreed with the information that he was presenting or had questions about it, yet didn't feel comfortable communicating their concerns to me or my office. On the other hand, I'm pleased that this report debunks the conspiracy theory that my office or I had any knowledge that the information provided by the former CIO was inaccurate and was allowing that inaccurate information to be disseminated for political purposes." UPDATE: The complete Office of Inspector General report has been released, refuting claims that a cyberattack was responsible for disrupting the FCC's comment system last year.
Pai's statement was issued before the OIG publicized its report, as one does when a report is imminent that essentially says your agency has been clueless at best or deliberately untruthful at worst, and for more than a year. To be clear, the report is still unpublished, though its broader conclusions are clear from Pai's statement. In it he slathers Bray with the partisan brush and asserts that the report exonerates his office: "I am deeply disappointed that the FCC's former [CIO], who was hired by the prior Administration and is no longer with the Commission, provided inaccurate information about this incident to me, my office, Congress, and the American people. This is completely unacceptable. I'm also disappointed that some working under the former CIO apparently either disagreed with the information that he was presenting or had questions about it, yet didn't feel comfortable communicating their concerns to me or my office. On the other hand, I'm pleased that this report debunks the conspiracy theory that my office or I had any knowledge that the information provided by the former CIO was inaccurate and was allowing that inaccurate information to be disseminated for political purposes." UPDATE: The complete Office of Inspector General report has been released, refuting claims that a cyberattack was responsible for disrupting the FCC's comment system last year.
Taking a page right out of Trump's book... blame the guy who came before you.
Is there a single agency, department, or aide in this degenerate president's administration that is not steeped in corruption and lies?
I would feel better if there was, because otherwise I'd have to begrudgingly acknowledge that Trump is history's greatest evil genius. I mean, he must have accidentally hired an honest person, right? I mean, even his campaign was a parade of reprobates and sleaze. It just never stops.
You are welcome on my lawn.
It's that some unknown parties were abusing the comment system and automatically generating comments supporting getting rid of net neutrality. When reached, many of the people said they didn't even know what it was, and definitely didn't fill out the comment form.
In addition, there were some very peculiar things going on with it. Such as the timestamps correlated with the names in order (alphabetically inserted).
Someone was definitely doing something screwy, and it was in support of dropping net neutrality. Somehow I think Ajit, being the slimeball that he is, won't be looking into this.
This administration? Wake up, Obama is no longer in office, we elected a golden pumpkin.
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Ok... this is a mostly IT audience which should have noticed the red herring when this happened.
They claimed it was a "hack". No one hacks a web site to skew comments... they script the submissions. Bots. Or humans employed to manually add scripted comments.
So think about it- the FCC leadership is either so incompetent, or so evil, that they blamed the "truth" on hackers in order to avoid the appearance of unpopularity.
I point this out resigned to the fact that not many people care. An exercise in futility. Move along. Nothing to see here.
Another consultant who stuck it out.
"We are the Priests, of the Temples of Syrinx..."
He wasn't 'let go', he left on his own, long, long, long before the report that implicated him. Even if he was the one to blame (he wasn't), it doesn't change the fact that, first, the FCC's comment system was a POS that shouldn't be used to get public opinion, and second, that someone used the fact the POS comment system failed to get partisan legislation passed. Sounds like an inside job to me.
And of course, who's to blame but Obama! Man that guy sure does get around.
Love how Pai makes big deal of previous CIO being hired by previous administration... When he himself was hired by same previous administration. Great stance suddenly denouncing the guy who is gone, when plenty of people have denounced FCC claims all along, yet Pai somehow couldn't reach the same conclusions those people did until now. Obviously his next step is politically empowering those who made this criticism all along. Not.
if you don't fire _all_ of them. When they let one go the one that got 'canned' goes to a cushy job at the telecoms (or whatever lobbyist group is buying whatever law we're talking about) and then another gets replaced.
This won't stop until Americans make refusing corporate & PAC money the primary litmus test for their candidates; _especially_ in primary elections. You can't serve two masters. Either you serve the people or you serve the donor class.
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Here's the thing -- when YOURE the one who has been caught lying, trying to pass the buck on to your predecessor just makes you look more like a douchebag.
The economy was already growing(despite Trump's exhortations to the contrary), unemployment is being counted the same way as it was before, which Trump himself said was a lie, and our relationship with North Korea is the same as it was before, despite Trump's claims to meaningful accomplishments, the net result of his summit in Singapore was a waste of tax dollars.
Oh wait, the deficit is growing, Puerto Rico is still being ignored, and the Turnip administration is whining about its own child internment policies forcing it to expand the effort to reunite families.
The comment period for the NN rules was a shit show all around, and utterly failed to fulfill it's purpose because people on both sides faked and spammed millions of times. By far, most of the fakes / spams were opposing the rule. Roughly 87% of the crap was opposed, probably because those who were in favor (isps) were more likely to understand that spamming shit comments would be absolutely pointless, as opposed to the Facebook reactionaries who had until then never heard of a "comment period".
It's helpful to understand what the comment process is all about. The agency publishes a draft of the rule and then people interested can comment on the wording, structure, and details of the draft. The agency then looks at each comment and adjusts the wording where appropriate, where they agree adjustments are needed, in order to produce the final draft. Occasionally, there is a second round of comments, with an interim draft.
It is NOT American Idol, not "press 2 to vote for Ajit Pai". It's not anything like a vote, in any way. It's a process to refine the wording and details, turning a proposed draft into the final rule.
Useful / proper comments which can effect this process point to specific words in specific sections, such as:
In section 2, subsection c, the proposed list does not indicate whether those requirements are "or" or "and". The word "or" should be inserted like so:
ISPs may block traffic that is:
1. Spam in violation of the CAN-SPAM act
2. A ddos attack as defined in 3(b)y
OR
3. Authorized to be blocked by the commission
I've had success with very minor policy "adjustments" as well, saying the list should also include and item #4 foobar because while it is similar to a ddos, it doesn't exactly fit the definition in 3(b)y because whatever. I've never seen a policy reversal, or anything remotely resembling a reversal, take place during the comment period. Rather, it's minor adjustments to the details.
That's the type of comment that gets a change made. The FCC isn't asking what their policy should be, they are looking for bugs in the way they have written the rules.
Of the top fake / spam comments, six of the top seven bogus comments, the ones bulk-submitted the most times, were OPPOSING the policy:
http://www.pewinternet.org/201...
Such spam is utterly pointless since the comment process is not a vote. It's more like proofreading.
The millions of duplicative spams sent in opposition came primarily from Demand Progress, an organization co-founded by Aaron Swartz orginally to protest seizure of domains like MegaUpload which exist primarily to engage in commerical criminal copyright infringement for profit.
Is it your assertion that Aaron Swartz and his associates were trying to "make it look like those who opposed net neutrality were trying to game the system", apparently in collaboration with the Russians? Because that's who submitted most of them.
The term 'hack' comes from MIT train hobbyist and the "hacking" they did to their model train setups to do crazy stuff. It describes any elaborate and convoluted means of achieving a desired end. Arranging for tens of thousands of obviously fake comments to get posted and for those fake comments to be accepted as real definitely fits the bill.
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Technically, what happened actually does fit the definition of a DDoS attack. Oliver found a deep link that wasn't supposed to get much traffic, exposed it and encouraged people to send lots of traffic there..
Not if the traffic is intended to actually use the service offered at link. DDos attacks try to block servers by keeping connections open as long as possible WITHOUT transmitting data.
Didn't Oliver merely encouraged people to use their free speech by using a feedback form that was especially intended for this kind of feedback?
I would not want to give businesses or agencies a blueprint for handling critics by setting up a web form on a server too weak to handle it and then sue for hacking when some user feedback brought it down....
bickerdyke
As in:
Those responsible for sacking the people who have just been sacked have been sacked.
bickerdyke
In my region unemployment is very low however wages are below 2007 levels despite a significant increase to cost of living. 70% off jobs do not pay enough to raise a family of 3. So yay, at least we have jobs.... even if they don't pay all the bills.
"Action without philosophy is a lethal weapon; philosophy without action is worthless."
I think you mean that they are using someone who has been gone for a year as a scapegoat to hide their blatant lies.
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You skipped the most important part of his point:
unemployment is being counted the same way as it was before, which Trump himself said was a lie
What does his job not including something preventing that didn't happen have to do with him lying to the public?
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They literally blocked further investigation. You can sit there all day and say that the smoking gun has no fingerprints on it, but the gun has been shot.
How's life in the hypocrite lane?