GAO Probing FCC Claims of Denial-of-Service Attack

The Government Accountability Office is investigating the Federal Communications Commission’s claim that its commenting system suffered a distributed denial-of-service attack during a controversial debate over repealing net neutrality rules in May 2017. The alleged DDoS attack, which slowed but did not completely disable the commenting site, came after comedian John Oliver urged his viewers to submit comments opposing the net neutrality rewrite favored by the Trump administration. The timing has led some critics to suggest the massive increase in traffic to the FCC commenting site may have come from citizens with legitimate concerns about the policy change rather than from automated computer bots. The FCC has not released data to support its claim that the system was hit by a DDoS attack.