1. Monthly archive
  2. May 2017

May 2017

Examining the FCC claim that DDoS attacks hit net neutrality comment system

On May 8, when the Federal Communications Commission website failed and many people were prevented from submitting comments about network neutrality, the cause seemed obvious. Comedian John Oliver had just aired a segment blasting FCC Chairman Ajit Pai's plan to gut net neutrality rules, and it appeared that the site just couldn't handle the sudden influx of comments. But when the FCC released a statement explaining the website's downtime, the commission didn't mention the Oliver show or people submitting comments opposing Pai's plan. Instead, the FCC attributed the downtime solely 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," performed by "actors" who "were not attempting to file comments themselves; rather, they made it difficult for legitimate commenters to access and file with the FCC." The FCC has faced skepticism from net neutrality activists who doubt the website was hit with multiple DDoS attacks at the same time that many new commenters were trying to protest the plan to eliminate the current net neutrality rules. According to FCC CIO David Bray, FCC staff noticed high comment volumes around 3:00 AM the morning of Monday, May 8. As the FCC analyzed the log files, it became clear that non-human bots created these comments automatically by making calls to the FCC's API. Interestingly, the attack did not come from a botnet of infected computers but was fully cloud-based. By using commercial cloud services to make massive API requests, the bots consumed available machine resources, which crowded out human commenters. In effect, the bot swarm created a distributed denial-of-service attack on FCC systems using the public API as a vehicle. It's similar to the distributed denial of service attack on Pokemon Go in July 2016.

Cable Industry Lobbyists Write Republican Talking Points on Net Neutrality

Following the vote by the Federal Communication Commission to unwind the net neutrality rules enacted during the Obama administration, House Republican lawmakers received an email from GOP leadership on how to defend the decision. “Want more information on the net neutrality discussion?” wrote House Republican Conference Chairman Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA). “Here is a nifty toolkit with news resources, myth vs reality information, what others are saying, and free market comments.”

The attached packet of talking points came directly from the cable industry. The metadata of the document shows it was created by Kerry Landon, the assistant director of industry grassroots at the National Cable and Telecommunications Association, a trade group that lobbies on behalf of Comcast, Cox Communications, Charter, and other cable industry companies. The document was shared with House Republican leaders via “Broadband for America,” a nonprofit largely funded by the NCTA. “The FCC is wisely repealing the reckless decision of its predecessors to regulate competing internet service providers,” reads one of the document’s talking points. “We rightly protest when governments around the world seek to place political controls over the internet, and the same should apply here in America,” according to another. The document also refers GOP caucus members to quotes they can use from other industry-funded nonprofits to defend the decision to repeal net neutrality through the rollback of Title II reclassification.

Fight for the Future Claims Comcast Censorship

Fight for the Future is claiming Comcast is trying to censor pro-network neutrality website Comcastroturf.com.

The site encourages users to investigate what Fight for the Future says are fake anti-net neutrality comments filed in the Federal Communications Commission docket and "likely" funded by the company, though it does not elaborate on that assertion. The group published a copy of a cease and desist letter that appears to be a legal representative of Comcast. The letter claims the domain name violates Comcast's intellectual property rights because it is "identical or confusingly similar" to Comcast's protected trademark because it "sounds the same, looks the same and is spelled similarly to Comcast." The letter says Comcast is ready to resolve the issue amicably and "without pursuing its claims for damages" but only if the domain is turned over to Comcast ASAP.

Federal Communications Commission FY 2018 Budget Estimates to Congress

The Federal Communications Commission’s fiscal year 2018 budget request. The FCC requests $322,035,000 in budget authority from regulatory fee offsetting collections. This request represents a decrease of $17,809,000 or 5.2 percent from the FY 2017 level of $339,844,000 that excludes the one-time request amount $16,866,992 for the headquarters move/restack. The FCC requests $111,150,000 in budget authority for the spectrum auctions program. This request represents a decrease of $5,850,000 or 5 percent from the FY 2017 level of $117,000,000. To date, the spectrum auctions program has generated over $114.6 billion for government use. The FCC requests 1,448 Full Time Equivalents (FTE’s) for regulatory fee offsetting collections and the spectrum auctions program. This request represents a decrease of 102 FTEs or 6.6 percent from the FY 2017 enacted level of 1,550. This will allow an alignment of the FCC workforce to meet the needs of today and the future rather than the requirements of the past.

© 1994-2025 Benton Institute for Broadband & Society. All Rights Reserved.