Cyberattack, not HBO comedian, caused website wipeout, says FCC

Wednesday, May 10, 2017

Late Sunday night and Monday morning, the website of the United States Federal Communications Commission (FCC) became unresponsive, which interfered with attempts by the public to express their views on the proposals currently up for comment, including one about Net Neutrality. Although comedian John Oliver on his show Last Week Tonight had asked his viewers to inundate the website with comments supporting Net Neutrality, the FCC says a DDoS (distributed denial-of-service) cyberattack, not angry HBO fans, are responsible for their website's issues.

FCC Chief Information Officer David Bray explained in a formal statement that FCC.gov's problems did not come from a large volume of complaints and comments, which is what Oliver had asked his fans to make, but from sabotage. "These actors were not attempting to file comments themselves; rather they made it difficult for legitimate commenters to access and file with the FCC," said Bray.

Net Neutrality is the idea that Internet providers should not be allowed to speed up or slow down access to certain websites, which would presumably be done for payment. In 2014, the U.S. government ruled Internet providers must be held to standards similar to those of telephone companies and changed their legal classification to fall under Title II of the 1934 Telecommunications Act, which gave the FCC the legal authority to order them not to give preferential treatment to high-paying customers.

In response to a previous Net Neutrality proposal in 2014, John Oliver did a segment on the fifth episode of Last Week Tonight explaining the difference between Title I and Title II status and asking his viewers to flood the FCC's websites with comments supporting regulation. Approximately 4 million did so, and the website crashed. Sunday night, Oliver asked the public to repeat the performance, recommending comments to make and providing a single link to take them to the exact part of FCC.gov required: "America needs you to rise — or more accurately, remain seated in front of your computer screen — to this occasion," said Oliver on the air. "So please, fly my pretties, fly once more!" Again, the FCC website soon suffered problems.

Despite Sunday night's issues, the FCC still received tens of thousands of comments on the proposed relaxing of the 2014 regulations, which is up for a vote on May 18.

Have an opinion on this story? Share it!

Sources

"FCC website 'targeted by attack' after John Oliver comments" — BBC News Online, May 9, 2017
Chaim Gartenberg. "John Oliver pleads with viewers to revive net neutrality fight" — The Verge, May 8, 2017
Hayley Tsukayama. "The FCC says an attack — not John Oliver — hampered its website" — Washington Post, May 8, 2017

Melissa Locker. "John Oliver Wants You to Flood the FCC Website to Save Net Neutrality, Again" — Time, May 8, 2017

Melissah Yang. "John Oliver tackles net neutrality again, encourages viewers to 'go FCC yourself'" — CNN, May 8, 2017
Jose Pagliery. "FCC adopts historic Internet rules" — CNN, February 25, 2015

External links

Last Week Tonight. "Net Neutrality II: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)" — YouTube, May 7, 2017

Share this:

This page is archived, and is no longer publicly editable.

Articles presented on Wikinews reflect the specific time at which they were written and published, and do not attempt to encompass events or knowledge which occur or become known after their publication.

Got a correction? Add the template {{editprotected}} to the talk page along with your corrections, and it will be brought to the attention of the administrators.

Please note that due to our archival policy, we will not alter or update the content of articles that are archived, but will only accept requests to make grammatical and formatting corrections.

Note that some listed sources or external links may no longer be available online due to age.

The text of this article is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License