Slashdot Mirror


The Internal Report Proving the FCC Made Up a Cyberattack (gizmodo.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Gizmodo: An investigation carried out by Federal Communication Commission's own inspector general officially refutes controversial claims that a cyberattack was responsible for disrupting the FCC's comment system in May 2017, at the height of the agency's efforts to kill off net neutrality. The investigation also uncovered that FCC officials had provided congressional lawmakers with misleading information regarding conversations between an FCC employee and the Federal Bureau of Investigation's cybercrime task force. A report from the inspector general's office (OIG) released Tuesday afternoon states that the comment system's downtime was likely caused by a combination of "system design issues" and a massive surge in traffic caused when Last Week Tonight host John Oliver directed millions of TV viewers to flood the FCC's website with pro-net neutrality comments.

Investigators were unable to "substantiate the allegations of multiple DDoS attacks" alleged by then-FCC Chief Information Officer David Bray, the report says. "At best, the published reports were the result of a rush to judgment and the failure to conduct analyses needed to identify the true cause of the disruption to system availability." [Here's an excerpt from the report:] "While we identified a small amount of anomalous activity and could not entirely rule out the possibility of individual DoS attempts during the period from May 7 through May 9, 2017, we do not believe this activity resulted in any measurable degradation of system availability given the minuscule scale of the anomalous activity relative to the contemporaneous voluminous viral traffic."
Yesterday, before the report was released, FCC chairman Ajit Pai came clean on the fact that the hack of its comment system last year actually took place. Pai blamed the former chief information officer and the Obama administration for providing "inaccurate information about the incident to me, my office, Congress, and the American people."

4 of 134 comments (clear)

  1. While you're distratced, EPA by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Perhaps you missed this really HUGE news in bad governance:

    https://archpaper.com/2018/08/epa-asbestos-manufacturing/

    EPA, the *ENVIRONMENTAL Protection Agency", “no longer consider the effect or presence of substances in the air, ground, or water in its risk assessments.”

    Under this rule change, EPA does not consider the *environment* while decided if something is bad for the environment. Hence asbestos, which still kills 40,000 people a year, is now safe and allowed in products, because it's presence in air is no longer considered, so its presence in lungs is no longer considered, so its no longer toxic, according to the EPA.

    So now Uralasbest can now export it from Russia to USA (its no longer made in USA). Here's a stock market quote of this company quoted in Moscow:
    https://www.marketwatch.com/investing/stock/urag?countrycode=ru

    To invest in the Russian stock market, you'll need a Russian trading bank..... Alfabank is one of the biggest of those.

    1+1=2, f**ing Russians.

  2. Re:I am absolutely outraged... by PopeRatzo · · Score: 4, Informative

    Oh, wait, this took place on the Obama adminstration's watch?

    Not another one. No, this didn't happen during the Obama administration's watch. It happened the first week of May, 2017. Someone else tried to use the "Obama's fault" card yesterday when Ajit Pai first admitted that his agency had not been hacked. How many times does this have to be shot down before you guys give up trying to lie about it?

    https://www.theguardian.com/te...

    Here's the story from last July, so you can track Ajit Pai's weasily and pitiful lie in real time.

    https://gizmodo.com/fcc-now-sa...

    And here's the Slashdot story from yesterday.

    https://it.slashdot.org/story/...

    --
    You are welcome on my lawn.
  3. How deep the net has fallen by nospam007 · · Score: 4, Informative

    Years ago, sites were Slashdotted, nowadays they get Olivered and Colberted.

  4. Re:Asbesto danger to lungs by drinkypoo · · Score: 4, Informative

    In a twisted weird point of view, the EPA is actually right :
    accidental small exposure to asbesto aren't dangerous, it's the chronic long-term exposition that is highly carcinogenic.

    Asbestos is dangerous even in small quantities, because it can easily be lodged in the epithelial wall. It depends mostly on the type of asbestos; shorter fibers mean less ability for cilia to sweep it out of your lungs. Any persistent lung irritant can cause cancer, asbestos is just spectacular at persisting because the body can't break it down.

    --
    "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"