Statement by FCC CIO on Denial-of-Service Attack on FCC Comment System

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Beginning on May 7 at midnight, our analysis reveals that the Federal Communications Commission 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.


Statement by FCC CIO on Denial-of-Service Attack on FCC Comment System FCC says it was victim of cyberattack after John Oliver show (The Hill) The FCC says an attack — not John Oliver — hampered its website (Washington Post) FCC: Commission Hit By DDoS Attacks (B&C)