Call for the release of the agency’s log files came after security expert and pro-net neutrality groups disputed the agency’s claim that someone attempted to “bombard the FCC’s comment system with a high amount of traffic flooded with requests” in the hours after the John Oliver’s “Last Week Tonight” show, which rallied viewer to leave feedback in favor of Obama-era net neutrality rules, which the FCC currently wants to roll back.
Two senator parties have written to the FCC to demand answers over the agency’s claim it was attacked by an “external party,” a claim that critics argue lacks substances.
In a ZDNet interview, FCC chief information officer David Bray said that the agency would not release the logs, in part because the logs contain private information, such as IP addresses. In unprinted remarks, he said that the logs amounted to about 1 gigabyte per hour during the alleged attack.
From the interviews, Bray said that FCC staff noticed a high volume of incoming comments in the early morning of May 8, hours after the John Oliver show aired. The log file showed that non-human bots submitted a flood of comment using the FCC’s API. The bot that submitted these comments sparked the massive uptick in internet data traffic on the FCC by using the public API as a vehicle.
That, the FCC said in a statements, and “prevented them from responding to people attempting to submit comments,” describing a denial-of-service-type event, albeit not in the traditional senses of a malicious attacks.
“If the fake comments — many of which are using real people’s name and addresses without their permission — were submitted using the FCC’s API, that means they should absolutely have information and data about who is committing this act of fraud,” she added.
The comments system will soon be open until mid-August for America to once again have their say.
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