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FCC Emails Show Agency Spread Lies to Bolster Dubious DDoS Attack Claims

posted by janrinok on Thursday June 07 2018, @09:24AM   Printer-friendly
from the are-we-surprised? dept.

canopic jug writes:

Gizmodo writes that FCC emails show that the agency spread lies to bolster false DDoS attack claims. Their system became overwhelmed in early 2017 after John Oliver directed his audience to flood the agency with comments supporting net neutrality. A similar surge had happened for similar reasons back in 2014. However, the current FCC team appears to have lied about both occasions.

Internal emails reviewed by Gizmodo lay bare the agency's efforts to counter rife speculation that senior officials manufactured a cyberattack, allegedly to explain away technical problems plaguing the FCC's comment system amid its high-profile collection of public comments on a controversial and since-passed proposal to overturn federal net neutrality rules.

The FCC has been unwilling or unable to produce any evidence an attack occurred—not to the reporters who've requested and even sued over it, and not to U.S. lawmakers who've demanded to see it. Instead, the agency conducted a quiet campaign to bolster its cyberattack story with the aid of friendly and easily duped reporters, chiefly by spreading word of an earlier cyberattack that its own security staff say never happened.

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  • (Score: 2) by arslan on Friday June 08 2018, @03:12AM (1 child)

    by arslan (3462) on Friday June 08 2018, @03:12AM (#690184)

    For example, most programmers, if asked the percentage complete for their portion of the project periodically will give answers that look something like: "50%", "90%", "95%", "96%", "98%", "99%", "99.5%", ...

    Huh? That's providing an estimate. There's a difference between doing an educated guess under the premise that everyone involved knowing it is as such vs. making statements that you know is not particularly true under the premise that you are expected to report the truth.

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  • (Score: 2) by Thexalon on Friday June 08 2018, @02:38PM

    by Thexalon (636) on Friday June 08 2018, @02:38PM (#690333)

    Presumably, managers are using those estimates under the assumption that the describe something vaguely close to reality. The pattern I just described makes the "50%" not even remotely close.

    A lot of programmers I've known give bogus estimates. Not just because of honest mistakes, either: If they give a bogus estimate, it looks like progress is being made and they're really close and management shouldn't cut off the project, while on many such occasions I know for a fact very little is being done.

    --
    The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.