The FCC’s Chief Information Officer David Bray said the Commission has been dealing with multiple distributed denial-of-service attacks in its Electronic Comment Filing System which have caused delays for consumers who want to file valid comments. The Commission did not specify the problem was caused by Late Night TV host John Oliver who’s been pushing his viewers to the site over Chairman Pai’s plan to rollback Net Neutrality.
Here’s the statement Bray issued and what the Commission has done to address the problem.
“Beginning on Sunday night at midnight, our analysis reveals that the FCC was subject to multiple distributed denial-of-service attacks (DDos). 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. These actors were not attempting to file comments themselves; rather they made it difficult for legitimate commenters to access and file with the FCC. While the comment system remained up and running the entire time, these DDoS events tied up the servers and prevented them from responding to people attempting to submit comments. We have worked with our commercial partners to address this situation and will continue to monitor developments going forward.”
Three years ago, John Oliver called on his TV show’s audience to contact the FCC and demand that they enact net neutrality. The 20-minute segment went viral and got millions of people who weren’t even aware of the issue speaking out.
Last night, John Oliver did it again—and within minutes, the FCC website crashed from the massive outpouring of grassroots pressure.