FCC says alleged cyberattack didn't happen By Aris Folley - 08/06/18 05:57 PM EDT 0
http://thehill.com/policy/technology/400635-fcc-says-cyberattack-didnt-happen-net-neutrality-repeal-complaints-shut The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) on Monday said that a cyberattack on its comment system that it claimed had taken place last year never actually happened. FCC Chairman Ajit Pai issued a statement regarding the Office of Inspector General’s independent investigation into the alleged incident last year involving the agency's Electronic Comment Filing System. “For several months, my office has been aware of and cooperating with the Office of Inspector General’s independent investigation into the incident involving the FCC’s ECFS that took place on May 7-8, 2017,” Pai said in the statement. “The Inspector General’s office asked my office not to discuss this investigation while it was ongoing so as not to jeopardize it, and my office has accommodated that request.” Pai said in the statement he was "deeply disappointed" that the FCC’s former chief information officer (CIO), whom he pointed out was hired by the prior administration and is no longer with the agency. Pai said the former CIO provided "inaccurate information about this incident to me, my office, Congress, and the American people." "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," Pai continued. The report arrives months after the government's top watchdog, the Government Accountability Office (GAO), agreed to investigate the now-debunked cyberattack targeting the FCC. The agency’s comment filing system was brought down in May 2017 after comedian John Oliver slammed the agency for trying to scale back net neutrality rules during a segment on his HBO show. The incident later generated speculation that the agency’s system had been overwhelmed with traffic because the comedian directed his viewers to file comments supporting the Obama-era net neutrality regulations. However, the agency later said that the system had been targeted with a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack, which overwhelms a website with massive amounts of fake traffic. "Indeed, as the report documents, on the morning of May 8, it was the former CIO who informed my office that ‘some external folks attempted to send high traffic in an attempt to tie-up the server from responding to others, which unfortunately makes it appear unavailable to everyone attempting to get through the queue,’" Pai went on to say in his statement. "In response, the Commission’s Chief of Staff, who works in my office, asked if the then-CIO was confident that the incident wasn’t caused by a number of individuals ‘attempting to comment at the same time . . . but rather some external folks deliberately trying to tie-up the server.’ In response to this direct inquiry, the former CIO told my office: ‘Yes, we’re 99.9% confident this was external folks deliberately trying to tie-up the server to prevent others from commenting and/or create a spectacle,'" Pai said. Updated: 6:05 p.m. _______________________________________________ Infowarrior mailing list Infowarrior@attrition.org https://attrition.org/mailman/listinfo/infowarrior
