House Democrats Demand More Details About May ECFS Cyberattacks

Ranking Democrats on a number of House committees and subcommittees wrote FCC commissioners and John Felker, director-National Cybersecurity and Communications Integration Center (NCCIC), Department of Homeland Security, asking for information about the May distributed denial-of-service attacks on the FCC website believed to have affected comments in the net neutrality proceeding (see 1705170067). Noting allegations that numerous comments in the net neutrality docket were forged (see 1705250064), the FCC letter's signers asked the agency "to examine these serious problems and irregularities that raise doubts about the fairness, and perhaps even the legitimacy, of the FCC's process in its net neutrality proceeding." Both were released Monday. The FCC letter sought answers to a variety of questions by July 17, including what steps the agency is pursuing to protect its electronic comment filing system, how the commission and FBI jointly determined the attack didn't rise to the level of an incident that would necessitate FBI involvement, and whether the agency contacted DHS's NCCIC Hunt and Incident Response Team about the cyberattacks -- and if it didn't, why not. The Felker letter also set a July 17 deadline as it asked for NCCIC to provide copies of all communications between it and the FCC on the May cyberattacks, plus any forensic analyses by and recommendations from NCCIC. The letter also requested a July 19 briefing. Signers were House Commerce Committee ranking member Frank Pallone, D-N.J., Communications and Technology Subcommittee ranking member Mike Doyle, D-Pa.; Oversight and Government Reform ranking member Elijah Cummings, D-Md.; Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee ranking member Diana DeGette, D-Colo.; Information Technology Subcommittee ranking member Robin Kelly, D-Ill.; and Government Operations Subcommittee ranking member Gerald Connolly, D-Va. The FCC didn't comment.