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Comment by komali2 | Hacker News Reader

I really liked [1]this comment on reddit illustrating evidence that not only was there no cyber attack on the FCC, but that it also self-orchestrated its supposed "DDOS." Curious HN's thoughts.

Realistically (or perhaps otherwise), what can Americans without enough money to lobby individually, do to prevent the FCC acting against our greater good, especially in the face of evidence that they are maliciously acting against the greater good? I have already called all of my senators and congressfolk, as well as written the president (for all that will do). This does not feel effective.

[1](https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/6odans/fcc_now_...)

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While I suspect the DDOS was fabricated, the linked reddit comment is flawed.

They claim that because the FCC uses Akamai as a CDN, that the FCC is immune from DDOS attacks. The FCC comment section is heavily reliant on a database, and you could simply overwhelm the database to DDOS that site. I would bet it is unlikely that the FCC utilized a cache for the queries.

It really depends, the calls to their database wouldn't be direct, it'd be through a REST API which then communicates with a DB. That REST API likely has some sort of DDOS protection, like for example how cloudflare protects ALL requests to the domain.

But anyway, their excuse that it needs to be secret is BS, DDOS protection methods are widespread and not very secret as it is. They probably just want to keep it secret, because they don't actually have proper DDOS protection.

> But anyway, their excuse that it needs to be secret is BS, DDOS protection methods are widespread and not very secret as it is. They probably just want to keep it secret, because they don't actually have proper DDOS protection.

This.

At what point did the government become a special interest group which does not exist to protect the nation it serves? Providing good security advice is their job.

Even if they do have some super secret techniques, keeping them secret is not a strategy, it's what idiots who don't know anything about technology or computers or network security would do.

I would trust Cloudflare's staff over the FCC's I.T. department every day of the week, and I hate Cloudflare.

Not only that, in what way does an independent agency having zero ties to national security or the IC have any right to hold just about* anything secret? This is asinine!

I think you underestimate just how far we've allowed natsec expansion to taint even the most benign agencies.

As a constitutionalist, the real problem as I have condensed it is that the balance between providing for the common defense has completely overshadowed things like securing the blessings of liberty. Our gov is increasingly leaning authoritarian, and the populace has allowed it.

I wouldn't say I've underestimated anything. That was an honest question; as in: "what mental gymnastics did the FCC do to even think that keeping secrets is allowable?"

That aside, I would agree with you.

Ah, a small miscommunication I guess. My guess is the decision to keep secrets was made and then someone was told to do the gymnastics.

You have to set up protection on an API, it doesn't come magically installed by default.

> like for example how cloudflare protects ALL requests to the domain.

The primary purpose of cloudflare is to hide the IP address of the server and filter packets on IP level. It does not magically protects from any attack, especially on application level.

It is wrong to assume that there is a universal automatic solution against DDOS. Neither CDN nor Cloudflare nor REST API (how?) can help with this.

"While I suspect the DDOS was fabricated, the linked reddit comment is flawed."

I too think that the DDOS is bollocks but I wouldn't go so far as to describe the reddit comment as flawed - MNGrrl presents quite a lot of additional evidence alongside the Akamai assertion. If you have some spare time it is worth reading/skimming the rest of the reddit thread. Whilst you are at it, look at the posting history of the highly rated commentators for some contextual bias hints. Follow links as well and lose a lot of time 8)

On balance the official story really does not stack up and I think a fully tooled up investigative journo could tear the FCC to pieces if given enough time and motivation to dot the Is and cross the Ts. The keyword there is motivation ...

Like a dude in a Starbucks on free wifi and a script?

As much as I would like to believe it was a government conspiracy I think the far more likely explanation was an attention starved black-hat taking advantage of an incompetent government website.

Exactly my thoughts: Don't assume malice when stupidity is an adequate explanation.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon%27s_razor

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