Chairman Pai reveals new details about cyberattack following John Oliver segment

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai unveiled new details about a reported cyberattack that came after comedian John Oliver urged his viewers to flood the agency with pro-network neutrality comments. In response to a series of questions about the incident from Sens Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Brian Schatz (D-HI), Chairman Pai said he was taking the issue seriously. “I agree that this disruption to [the Electronic Comment Filing System] by outside parties was a very serious matter,” Pai wrote in a letter. “As a result, my office immediately directed our Chief Information Officer (CIO) to take appropriate measures to secure the integrity of ECFS and to keep us apprised of the situation. The Commission's CIO has informed me that the FCC's response to the events sufficiently addressed the disruption, and that ECFS is continuing to collect all filed comments."

The ECFS slowed to a crawl after Oliver’s HBO show addressed the net neutrality proceeding in May, leading many to assume that the system was bogged down by an influx of public filings. But the next day, FCC CIO David Bray said the disruption was caused by a malicious distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack, a move designed to take down a site by flooding it with fake traffic. “I appreciate the FCC’s response,” Sen Wyden said. “I’m waiting to draw any final conclusions until the FBI weighs in. However, it is clear that FCC wasn’t ready for this attack. In the future, the agency should consider other ways to submit comments if its web portal fails again.”