ECFS Still Appears to Be Struggling After Reported DDoS Attack on FCC System

The FCC Electronic Comment Filing System seemed to still be experiencing problems Wednesday, as it has been this week. Access to filings was intermittent and apparently limited to only some dockets when we did have access. The agency declined to comment. The commission has been receiving high volumes of comments on its open internet draft proposals, which Sunday night was the target of a commentary by HBO comedian John Oliver. His 2014 commentary was credited with helping spark a wave of public comments in a previous net neutrality rulemaking that apparently helped crash the agency's system (see 1406040046). Beginning Sunday at midnight, the commission was "subject to multiple distributed denial-of-service attacks" that eventually tied up servers in the agency's commercial cloud host's system, preventing responses to people trying to submit comments, said Chief Information Officer David Bray Monday (see 1705080042). Fight for the Future, which backs net neutrality rules, Tuesday questioned whether the DDoS attacks took place right after Oliver's commentary, and Sens. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., and Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, wrote the FCC Tuesday to ask questions about the situation and urge an alternative way to file comments (see 1705090063).