FCC responds to DDoS attack in May

In May, comedian John Oliver urged viewers of his show to express their dislike around Chairman Ajit Pai’s proposed reversal of net neutrality by writing comments on the FCC’s Electronic Comment Filing System (ECFS). Many viewers did go to the site and expressed their views. However, the FCC comments site was quickly brought down by what looks like a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS). The site was receiving 160 requests per second with traffic mainly coming from a cloud service, not IP addresses which would be common if the traffic was legitimate.

Democratic senators have asked Chairman Pai a series of questions around the breach and have questioned the FCC’s readiness in light of such an attack. Pai has just responded agreeing the matter is being taken very seriously, but is not being investigated by the FBI, much to the disappointment of the Democratic senators.

In Pai’s written response, he details the post-attack process as follows: “Following this attack, the FCC CIO directed the Chief lnformation Security Officer (CISO) to consult with the FBI. In speaking with the FBI, the conclusion was reached that, given the facts currently known, the attack did not appear to rise to the level of a major incident that would trigger further FBI involvement.”

Cetainly the DDoS attack was very serious. If it can happen to the FCC, it can happen to other organizations, both big and small. If you want to learn more about how TransNexus solutions can prevent all sorts of telephony fraud, including denial of service attacks, visit our SIP Analytics page then contact us today to learn more.