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Security Communications Government United States

FCC Admits It Was Never Actually Hacked (techcrunch.com) 214

Posted by BeauHD from the finger-pointing dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: The FCC has come clean on the fact that a purported hack of its comment system last year never actually took place, after a report from its inspector general found a lack of evidence supporting the idea. Chairman Ajit Pai blamed the former chief information officer and the Obama administration for providing "inaccurate information about this incident to me, my office, Congress, and the American people." It was so galling to everyone looking for answers that the GAO was officially asked to look into it. The letter requesting the office's help at the time complained that the FCC had "not released any records or documentation that would allow for confirmation that an attack occurred, that it was effectively dealt with, and that the FCC has begun to institute measures to thwart future attacks and ensure the security of its systems." That investigation is still going on, but one conducted by the FCC's own OIG resulted in the report Pai cites.

Pai's statement was issued before the OIG publicized its report, as one does when a report is imminent that essentially says your agency has been clueless at best or deliberately untruthful at worst, and for more than a year. To be clear, the report is still unpublished, though its broader conclusions are clear from Pai's statement. In it he slathers Bray with the partisan brush and asserts that the report exonerates his office: "I am deeply disappointed that the FCC's former [CIO], who was hired by the prior Administration and is no longer with the Commission, provided inaccurate information about this incident to me, my office, Congress, and the American people. This is completely unacceptable. I'm also disappointed that some working under the former CIO apparently either disagreed with the information that he was presenting or had questions about it, yet didn't feel comfortable communicating their concerns to me or my office. On the other hand, I'm pleased that this report debunks the conspiracy theory that my office or I had any knowledge that the information provided by the former CIO was inaccurate and was allowing that inaccurate information to be disseminated for political purposes." UPDATE: The complete Office of Inspector General report has been released, refuting claims that a cyberattack was responsible for disrupting the FCC's comment system last year.
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FCC Admits It Was Never Actually Hacked More

FCC Admits It Was Never Actually Hacked

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  • Isn't it? Well?

    Somebody messed up and he got himself canned at least.

    • Re: (Score:1, Funny)

      by PopeRatzo ( 965947 )

      Somebody messed up and he got himself canned at least.

      No, he's still president.

    • It doesn't do any good to fire them (Score:5, Insightful)

      by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Monday August 06, 2018 @07:01PM (#57081912)
      if you don't fire _all_ of them. When they let one go the one that got 'canned' goes to a cushy job at the telecoms (or whatever lobbyist group is buying whatever law we're talking about) and then another gets replaced.

      This won't stop until Americans make refusing corporate & PAC money the primary litmus test for their candidates; _especially_ in primary elections. You can't serve two masters. Either you serve the people or you serve the donor class.
      • Serve the people? You mean the deplorables? Why would we want the government to serve them? Deport the deplorables. Get new immigrants in.

  • Typical of this administration (Score:5, Informative)

    by the_bard17 ( 626642 ) <theluckyone17@gmail.com> on Monday August 06, 2018 @06:31PM (#57081768)

    Taking a page right out of Trump's book... blame the guy who came before you.

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by snapsnap ( 5451726 )

      But this guy was appointed to the FCC board by the previous administration. We shouldn't forget that fact.

      • There is that. Plenty of blame to go around for both parties.

      • But this guy was appointed to the FCC board by the previous administration. We shouldn't forget that fact.

        I see - So it is O'Blama's fault obviously. He colluded with Trump to appoint Pai, after using the Pizzagate time machine to sneak back and forth in time and told Pai that he had to pretend the FCC site was hacked in order to implement a policy that after implementation, O'Blama is getting billions from the people who will profit from this. He is going to split it 50/50 with succubus Hillary Clinton in thier secret fake moon landing quonset hut and chemtrail storage facility in Area 51.

        Perhaps O'Blama, t

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by rtb61 ( 674572 )

          Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Bush, Obama, all the same side of politics, all the same corruption, all the same policies, all blaming each other, whilst all agreeing in back rooms and collecting the same bonuses in the same tax havens. The clean up has commenced, and Trump was just the bull tossed into the establishment china shop to create chaos. Woo hoo, the fun has only just begun. The next three US electoral cycles will be quite interesting and more chaotic as they progress. The people demanding their voice, l

      • But this guy was appointed to the FCC board by the previous administration. We shouldn't forget that fact.

        Given the fact that of the 5 members of the FCC board no more than 3 of them can be from one party the previous administration didn't have much choice in accepting Pai for the commission. I guess they could have rejected him but it would have caused more political outcry than it would have been worth and they would have got someone similar anyway.

        • Obama could have actually gotten plenty of political credit for blocking Pai. He's the most blatant shill ever, and ISPs are less popular than the government.

    • Re:Typical of this administration (Score:5, Funny)

      by bobbied ( 2522392 ) on Monday August 06, 2018 @07:10PM (#57081968)

      Taking a page right out of Trump's book... blame the guy who came before you.

      There's a joke that goes with that...

      A new hire manager type was starting a new job and knowing the previous manager was highly praised showed up the day the previous manager was scheduled to leave to ask his advice and find out the secrets of the job if he could. The exiting manager was just walking out when he arrived and told him "I left you instructions in what's now your desk. Just look in the top drawer. Everything you need to know is in those but follow the instructions carefully. Good Luck!" and he left claiming he had an appointment to keep.

      The next work day, the new manager couldn't wait to see what the instructions where so he arrived early and got though the onboarding process as quickly as he could. At noon, just after meeting his new team he was finally shown his desk and allowed to settle in and get to work. He sat down, opening the desk drawer and found three separate envelops. One was labeled "Open Now", another was labeled "Open in 12 months" and the final one was labeled "Open in 24 months" which seemed weird but taking the letter opener out he opened the first one.

      "Welcome to your new job. I hope you have the same success I did. Here is what I recommend you do. For the next 12 months you should keep things mostly as they are. Any problems you have with the system or the individuals on the team you can blame on me. Tell management that you have identified the problem and it was the previous manager's fault."

      So that's what he did. For 12 moths, any problems where blamed on the previous manager and it worked. He was getting good performance reviews, people thought he was effective, everybody was happy with him. He couldn't wait to see the advice in the next envelop.

      At 12 months, he went into his office, closed the door, and opened the second letter. "Reorganize the whole department. Scramble every job, rewrite every process. Call it process improvement, business to process alignment, what ever you want. Tell everybody you are fixing the issues that have plagued you for the last 12 months. Now you must stop blaming me, but you can now blame all problems on the team and the reorganization and rewrite of the process. 'We are all learning the new process and working out the kinks while we learn our new responsibilities' is now your theme." So that's what he did. It was bumpy, filled with problems that he blamed on the reorganization but everybody like him still and his performance appraisals where again excellent that year.

      As 24 months approached, the wisdom of the previous manager was apparent and his advice was working really well. People where singing the current managers abilities and hard work. There where lots of problems, but the belief was the new guy was working those out and everybody was happy. Again, as the 24th month started, the new manager entered his office, closed the door, took a deep breath as he slipped the last envelop out of his desk drawer to read it and find out what pearls of wisdom he was about to get and how this would again advance his career. The pervious manager was AMAZING!

      He opens the last letter and it says only this: "Write three letters.. "

  • Okefenokee (Score:4, Insightful)

    by PopeRatzo ( 965947 ) on Monday August 06, 2018 @06:32PM (#57081770) Journal

    Is there a single agency, department, or aide in this degenerate president's administration that is not steeped in corruption and lies?

    I would feel better if there was, because otherwise I'd have to begrudgingly acknowledge that Trump is history's greatest evil genius. I mean, he must have accidentally hired an honest person, right? I mean, even his campaign was a parade of reprobates and sleaze. It just never stops.

  • It wasn't that it got hacked... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 06, 2018 @06:35PM (#57081796)

    It's that some unknown parties were abusing the comment system and automatically generating comments supporting getting rid of net neutrality. When reached, many of the people said they didn't even know what it was, and definitely didn't fill out the comment form.

    In addition, there were some very peculiar things going on with it. Such as the timestamps correlated with the names in order (alphabetically inserted).

    Someone was definitely doing something screwy, and it was in support of dropping net neutrality. Somehow I think Ajit, being the slimeball that he is, won't be looking into this.

    • The comment period for the NN rules was a shit show all around, and utterly failed to fulfill it's purpose because people on both sides faked and spammed millions of times. By far, most of the fakes / spams were opposing the rule. Roughly 87% of the crap was opposed, probably because those who were in favor (isps) were more likely to understand that spamming shit comments would be absolutely pointless, as opposed to the Facebook reactionaries who had until then never heard of a "comment period".

      It's helpful

      • By far, most of the fakes / spams were opposing the rule.

        Russian troll ads were shown to the opposition of such views, in order to galvanize voters. And the fakes/spams in the FCC comment period on net neutrality were designed to make it look like those who opposed net neutrality were trying to game the system.

        • The millions of duplicative spams sent in opposition came primarily from Demand Progress, an organization co-founded by Aaron Swartz orginally to protest seizure of domains like MegaUpload which exist primarily to engage in commerical criminal copyright infringement for profit.

          Is it your assertion that Aaron Swartz and his associates were trying to "make it look like those who opposed net neutrality were trying to game the system", apparently in collaboration with the Russians? Because that's who submitted

    • The term 'hack' comes from MIT train hobbyist and the "hacking" they did to their model train setups to do crazy stuff. It describes any elaborate and convoluted means of achieving a desired end. Arranging for tens of thousands of obviously fake comments to get posted and for those fake comments to be accepted as real definitely fits the bill.
      • Real comments on a comment page, which is what actually happened, are not hacks. Eat a dick, you bootlicking shitwad.
        • that the comments weren't real. Also, if you're a Russian troll you're doing a terrible job of it. And if you're not you're even worse at whatever the hell it is you're doing. I can't decide.

          • There were fake comments, but the comments that were claimed by Pai to be part of the "hack" (the pro-net neutrality comments, particularly in response to John Oliver) were real.

  • Tell Tale Sign... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by beheaderaswp ( 549877 ) * on Monday August 06, 2018 @06:45PM (#57081840)

    Ok... this is a mostly IT audience which should have noticed the red herring when this happened.

    They claimed it was a "hack". No one hacks a web site to skew comments... they script the submissions. Bots. Or humans employed to manually add scripted comments.

    So think about it- the FCC leadership is either so incompetent, or so evil, that they blamed the "truth" on hackers in order to avoid the appearance of unpopularity.

    I point this out resigned to the fact that not many people care. An exercise in futility. Move along. Nothing to see here.

  • I had a subject, but it was too long, sorry (Score:4, Interesting)

    by mutantSushi ( 950662 ) on Monday August 06, 2018 @06:46PM (#57081858)
    Love how Pai makes big deal of previous CIO being hired by previous administration... When he himself was hired by same previous administration. Great stance suddenly denouncing the guy who is gone, when plenty of people have denounced FCC claims all along, yet Pai somehow couldn't reach the same conclusions those people did until now. Obviously his next step is politically empowering those who made this criticism all along. Not.

    • Re:I had a subject, but it was too long, sorry (Score:5, Insightful)

      by rahvin112 ( 446269 ) on Monday August 06, 2018 @08:02PM (#57082250)

      Pai is simply trying to shift the blame for his own lying. He's the one that claimed this was hacking. He's the one that tried to game the comments using this line and he's the one that right up until the IG report came out claimed it was hacking. Now that the report is out saying he's a liar he's trying to deflect that to say it's not his fault.

      He's the head of the FCC, everything the FCC does is his fault, even if he wasn't the jackass on TV making these claims he's now blaming on someone else he would still be responsible. But I guess because he was nominated by Trump he's in the Trump class where he dosn't take responsibility for anything that happens under his watch.

      So much for responsible government administration where people take responsibility for the people who serve under them, in the new Trump paradigm the leader isn't responsible for anything, including the things they actually did do.

      • Just shows how stupid the previous administration was to appoint Pai.

        The Right would never do such a thing, they always appoint reliable people.

  • Lying liar says what? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by mr.dreadful ( 758768 ) on Monday August 06, 2018 @07:06PM (#57081946)
    Here's the thing -- when YOURE the one who has been caught lying, trying to pass the buck on to your predecessor just makes you look more like a douchebag.

  • is there will be exactly zero consequences even after admitting they lied to pretty much everyone.

    Zero. None. Nada. Zip.

    As I posted in another thread about corporations and their standby scapegoats whenever they get caught doing something immoral, unethical
    or downright illegal, so too does the government have their pockets full of excuses ready to go when they fall into the spotlight of shame.

    They always tend to blame everyone except themselves.

    Yet, so deep is the bullshit, they are too blind to realize

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      They are not blind. They know what they are doing and they are not at all concerned about "the problem". We are stupid to allow this behavior.

  • No kidding? You mean the comments site which actually has an API for bulk submissions wasn't attacked by 1337 h4x0r5, just someone using the API exactly how it was intended? Who'da thunk it?

  • Pai was announcing an upcoming report from the FCC's inspector general. That inspector general is David L. Hunt. https://www.fcc.gov/inspector-general [fcc.gov] He was appointed in 2011, during the Obama administration, http://thehill.com/policy/technology/137015-david-hunt-named-fcc-inspector-general [thehill.com] So this an Obama appointee reporting on an Obama appointee, not Pai going after an Obama administration official.

  • Chairman Ajit Pai blamed the former chief information officer and the Obama administration

    Party of personal responsibility!

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