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Real confirmation of an attack would be a nice-to-have in this situation. I can see 3 probable realities: 1. The sheer volume of commenters and responses took

Real confirmation of an attack would be a nice-to-have in this situation. I can see 3 probable realities: 1. The sheer volume of commenters and responses took down the system. They cover it by saying a DDoS attack was the cause. 2. They are intent on crippling Net Neutrality anyway, and either designed the system to insufficiently handle traffic and call it a DDos or even DDos themselves. 3. Since there are groups with vested interest in removing net neutrality, and they have deep pockets, I can easily see a few groups moving to protect their interests. In other words, a legitimate DDoS attack. All 3 seem equally likely to me, especially considering Ajit Pai's stance on NN. This is not encouraging as a citizen of the US.

clusmore 9y ago
In 2016, Australia held its first online-first national census. Unsurprisingly it was a complete disaster, and the government told us the system was the victim of a DDoS attack right around dinner time for the east coast. They also told us they expected around 10 million participants and that during capacity planning they took the expected 1 million submissions per hour and doubled it to be safe, i.e. that a bunch of statisticians thought that 10 million people would form a uniform distribution over a day rather than spiking when they get home from work.
- duncan_bayne 9y ago
  Yeah. The ineptitude there was staggering. I was actually going to refuse to fill out the census on principle, but my wife's sense of civic duty prevailed ;) Fortunately so did her risk analysis skills. She noticed those numbers being bandied about by the Government prior, and decided she'd log on the very moment the census opened, because it was likely to fail under load.
ben_jones 9y ago
1a. Incompetent IT failed to implement proper monitoring/logging and they honestly don't know if it was legitimate traffic or a DDOS attack.
- SEJeff 9y ago
  This is the US government, which generally procures according to the lowest bidder. Unfortunately, this kind of thing is business as usual.
ben174 9y ago
John Oliver's video is #3 trending on YouTube right now. It specifically calls for people to write comments on that page. He even bought up a domain that points directly to the page. http://gofccyourself.com http://gofccyourself.com
- pera 9y ago
  Citing the second paragraph of the posted article: > “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.”
  - unityByFreedom 9y ago
    And the official statement from the FCC, > “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.” [1] Given that the FCC thinks "bulk commenting" via a spreadsheet is a proper solution to their website difficulties, I don't really believe in their ability to diagnose an issue as a DDoS. More likely, lots of people were trying to comment but couldn't. [1] http://transition.fcc.gov/Daily_Releases/Daily_Business/2017/db0508/DOC-344764A1.pdf http://transition.fcc.gov/Daily_Releases/Daily_Business/2017...
    - thaumasiotes 9y ago
      I'm imagining something like - User tries to load the page to comment. - High traffic. It fails. - User reloads the page. It fails. - "We're being hit by malicious requests that don't attempt to file comments!"
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
wccrawford 9y ago
4. There are idiots out there that would DDoS it simply because it's there and think it'd be "fun" to take down something important.
pvg 9y ago
"Three probable realities" is an oddly quantum way to describe three speculative theories.
- wcarron 9y ago
  Yes, perhaps the wording was odd. There is an actual... er, sequence of events that did happen. In other words, a reality. There is reality and speculation, but seeing as I can't know for certain, I can only speculate. The options I listed appeared to me to be the most probable.
Uehreka 9y ago
After watching John Oliver's show on HBO Now, I tried to leave a comment and the site was down. This was at midnight, around the time all HBO Now subscribers would've been getting to the "Here's how to leave a comment" part of the program. No doubt live viewers had posted about gofccyourself.com on social media after doing it themselves, adding to the traffic. This was no attack, this was legitimate public outrage.
- rybosome 9y ago
  The lunacy of something that provokes this much public outrage continuing on unabated just floors me.

clusmore 9y ago

In 2016, Australia held its first online-first national census. Unsurprisingly it was a complete disaster, and the government told us the system was the victim of a DDoS attack right around dinner time for the east coast. They also told us they expected around 10 million participants and that during capacity planning they took the expected 1 million submissions per hour and doubled it to be safe, i.e. that a bunch of statisticians thought that 10 million people would form a uniform distribution over a day rather than spiking when they get home from work.

duncan_bayne 9y ago
Yeah. The ineptitude there was staggering. I was actually going to refuse to fill out the census on principle, but my wife's sense of civic duty prevailed ;) Fortunately so did her risk analysis skills. She noticed those numbers being bandied about by the Government prior, and decided she'd log on the very moment the census opened, because it was likely to fail under load.

ben_jones 9y ago

1a. Incompetent IT failed to implement proper monitoring/logging and they honestly don't know if it was legitimate traffic or a DDOS attack.

SEJeff 9y ago
This is the US government, which generally procures according to the lowest bidder. Unfortunately, this kind of thing is business as usual.

ben174 9y ago

John Oliver's video is #3 trending on YouTube right now. It specifically calls for people to write comments on that page. He even bought up a domain that points directly to the page. http://gofccyourself.com http://gofccyourself.com

pera 9y ago
Citing the second paragraph of the posted article: > “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.”
- unityByFreedom 9y ago
  And the official statement from the FCC, > “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.” [1] Given that the FCC thinks "bulk commenting" via a spreadsheet is a proper solution to their website difficulties, I don't really believe in their ability to diagnose an issue as a DDoS. More likely, lots of people were trying to comment but couldn't. [1] http://transition.fcc.gov/Daily_Releases/Daily_Business/2017/db0508/DOC-344764A1.pdf http://transition.fcc.gov/Daily_Releases/Daily_Business/2017...
  - thaumasiotes 9y ago
    I'm imagining something like - User tries to load the page to comment. - High traffic. It fails. - User reloads the page. It fails. - "We're being hit by malicious requests that don't attempt to file comments!"

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

wccrawford 9y ago

4. There are idiots out there that would DDoS it simply because it's there and think it'd be "fun" to take down something important.

pvg 9y ago

"Three probable realities" is an oddly quantum way to describe three speculative theories.

wcarron 9y ago
Yes, perhaps the wording was odd. There is an actual... er, sequence of events that did happen. In other words, a reality. There is reality and speculation, but seeing as I can't know for certain, I can only speculate. The options I listed appeared to me to be the most probable.

Uehreka 9y ago

After watching John Oliver's show on HBO Now, I tried to leave a comment and the site was down. This was at midnight, around the time all HBO Now subscribers would've been getting to the "Here's how to leave a comment" part of the program. No doubt live viewers had posted about gofccyourself.com on social media after doing it themselves, adding to the traffic. This was no attack, this was legitimate public outrage.

rybosome 9y ago
The lunacy of something that provokes this much public outrage continuing on unabated just floors me.