Dems Seek GAO Review of FCC DDOS Attack

A pair of top Democrats have asked the Government Accountability Office to investigate the FCC's claim of a distributed denial of service (DDOS) attack that the commission said impeded the filing of comments and occurred not long after John Oliver, host of HBO's Last Week Tonight, called for a flood of pro-network neutrality comments.

In a letter to GAO, House Energy & Commerce Committee ranking member Frank Pallone (D-N.J.) and Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii), Communications Subcommittee ranking member, said that while the FBI and FCC have responded to congressional inquiries about the attack, they have not supplied any documentation.

Related: Dems: FCC DDOS Attack Raises Cybersecurity Questions

They said questions remain that GAO needs to answer. Those are principally: 1) How did the FCC determine an attack had taken place May 8; 2) How does the FCC plan to prevent a future attack; 3) What are the cybersecurity implications and are other systems at risk; and 4) Has the FCC evaluated other systems for vulnerabilities and if so, has it taken any action.

John Eggerton

Contributing editor John Eggerton has been an editor and/or writer on media regulation, legislation and policy for over four decades, including covering the FCC, FTC, Congress, the major media trade associations, and the federal courts. In addition to Multichannel News and Broadcasting + Cable, his work has appeared in Radio World, TV Technology, TV Fax, This Week in Consumer Electronics, Variety and the Encyclopedia Britannica.