AT&T Blocking Access to Portions of 4chan (Updated Again)

The only effective thing to do is block access to sites *from* ATT DSL IP blocks.

It will mean 15% less traffic.

How bad do you want to support Net neutrality?

Selgdon, we’re not in the business of blocking people from viewing us. Only AT&T appears to be in the business of blocking.

What we’re doing, is helping AT&T customers fight back. That is the most effective thing we can do, and it is what we have been doing for six years now.

The /b/tard effect has begun:

http://www.ireport.com/docs/DOC-304698

(Yes, this is obviously fake news, in case you’re not familiar with how the /b/tards operate).

It’s /r9k/ not /r2k/, but otherwise good info. Nice to see people in the media interested in net neutrality.

Randall Stephenson, AT&T CEO
randall.stephenson@att.com
175 E. Houston
San Antonio, TX 78205
+1-210-821-4105

http://pastebin.com/f299e40db
Summary: AT&T is blaming Moot even though tracert proves it’s AT&T. Customers call 1-877-SBC-DSL5 to instantly get Tier-2 techs.

This brings up very interesting net neutrality issues, and shows why it is so important for transparency in such a large ISP.

The /r9k/ typo has been corrected, the link was valid… just the text was a typo.

AT&T could not care less who protests. This is probably a test case, carefully chosen by them.

They have campaigned against net neutrality for years. If they get away with this one, they will gradually block more and more sites until they have set a precedent. Then they can just censor as they please, and rest assured there will be a right-wing political agenda.

The people to protest to are the FCC. We now have an FCC chairman who seems to care about net neutrality and justice.

Create a petition to FCC. Publicize that. Include your congress members and Senators, too. Make things hot For AT&T ASAP. The longer we wait, the more ground we will have lost.

http://mailman.nanog.org/pipermail/nanog/2009-July/012182.html

This has begun making the rounds.

We’re giving AT&T a day to respond… let’s not jump the gun here. There is evidence that a virus (anontalk) was doing harm to AT&T’s network. This virus is a botnet virus specifically targeting portions of 4chan.

AT&T may have blocked access temporarily to address it.

Of course, that’s no excuse for AT&T not issuing a service/maintenance announcement about it. And, it is pretty clear that AT&T is testing the waters to see what they can get away with in this regard.

We’re giving them a business day to come up with a full statement… rest assured, over on PhoneNews.com we’re already working with the FCC to handle legally-suspect actions by AT&T Mobility… we’ll push people in that direction shortly should the situation not improve shortly.

AT&T has contacted the admins of the website as to why they are being blocked. We didn’t email the owner or call the owner – only contacted the admins of the site itself as to the reasons we blocked it. Why its blocked – thats between AT&T and the website. Sounds like it’s going to be a case of he said she said.

After 40 minutes with U-Verse tier1/2, the tier-2 rep “Chris” at least admits that AT&T is indeed filtering the site and are no longer blaming the host or 4chan. Nice of them!

For anyone that wishes to bypass the normal tier1/2 and dial or email direct:
1-877-293-9986, passcode for this week=1743 (for last week=6506?)
Supervisor “Luke”, LB1274@att.com

Kind regards,
Jeff

…and not 20 minutes later, AT&T has unblocked /b/! Hopefully this is indication that they’ve come to their senses as opposed to trying to fight this out with their own customers.

Kind regards,
Jeff

Maybe 4chan came to THEIR senses and complied with AT&T……the world may never know…

“
First they came for the pedophiles, and I did not speak out, because I was not a pedophile.

Then, they came for the pirates, and I did not speak out because I was not a pirate.

Then they came for anonymous, and I did not speak out because I was not anonymous.

Then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak out for me.

„

—Pedophile Pirate Anonymous No. 148750237

Dreu, 4chan has said that nobody from AT&T has contacted nobody on their staff (as of this evening). Your distinction between “owner” and “admin” is irrelevant, as moot serves as both owner and administrator.

In either event, the blockade has been lifted, as we noted in the article update.

VICTORY FOR THE OPPRESSED!!!

MARCH ON WE WILL!!!

There has been alot of customers on our network who were complaining about ACK
scan reports coming from 207.126.64.181. We had no choice but to block that
single IP until the attacks let up. It was a decision I made with the gentleman
that owns the colo facility currently hosts 4chan. There was no other way around
it. I’m sure AT&T is probably blocking it for the same reason. 4chan has been
under attack for over 3 weeks, the attacks filling up an entire GigE. If you
want to blame anyone, blame the script kiddies who pull this kind of stunt.

Regards,
Shon Elliott
Senior Network Engineer
unWired Broadband, Inc.

if the process at&t followed was similar to these folks the ‘owner’ of 4chan that everyone at at&t was talking about is probably the owner of the colocation facility and not moot

fffffff, that sounds like nice logic and all… but if you’re going to block a site, you need to keep the owner of the site in the loop.

If AT&T’s call centers didn’t learn that today, I don’t know what will teach them.

Assuming AT&T was trying to mitigate a DDOS attack on their network (and I’m not assuming that), they had an obligation to inform the site owner and keep him/her up-to-date. I am familiar with several FCC policies that require this, but it appears “moot” to go down that path at this point…

… AT&T got the message, finally.

Shawn Elliott’d.

ROW ROW FIGHT THE POWAH!

… AT&T got the message, finally.

Its nice to know where this website has its bias leaning toward…

oh wait you are moot haha

well keep in mind that the decision was probably made by lower-middle management, especially if the traffic had become very rough and started to affect service to the general customer population. everyone with actual authority was probably at home with their families and unreachable, and so at&t’s PR people did what all middle-level bureaucrats do and try to stall for time while they try to find someone with greater authority to make the decision for them. i suspect that once someone with actual authority and sense was apprised of the situation he gave the person responsible a full lambasting and ordered the block undone.

or they were trying to figure out how to block only the ACK responses by img.4chan.org and accidentally blocked any packet with the IP in it from being routed through any of their routers. i don’t blame you for trying to get an apology or at least an explanation from them, i just hope anonymous doesn’t do something stupid and provoke politicians into letting at&t block them due to ‘gross criminality’ or something and therefore letting the thin edge of the net neutrality wedge in

wait no moot’s name is christopher poole not christopher price

Dreu, all MechaWorks sites are biased to the consumer. It’s part of our mission statement. Companies that operate within the law, and serve their customers as best as they can… are the best companies out there.

AT&T didn’t serve their customers well here, and any objective observer can see that.

There has been rumors about AT&T getting a virus attack and thusly blocked 4chan to isolate the attacks. Do we get any conformation on that claim?

QUOTE: i suspect that once someone with actual authority and sense was apprised of the situation he gave the person responsible a full lambasting and ordered the block undone.

Probably or maybe they realized that they just opened a huge-ass vat of radioactive worms and now gone head first into a lot of serious shit, and now backpeddling.

QUOTE:or they were trying to figure out how to block only the ACK responses by img.4chan.org and accidentally blocked any packet with the IP in it from being routed through any of their routers. i don’t blame you for trying to get an apology or at least an explanation from them, i just hope anonymous doesn’t do something stupid and provoke politicians into letting at&t block them due to ‘gross criminality’ or something and therefore letting the thin edge of the net neutrality wedge in

Hopefully they can give a decent explaination to what the fuck they were trying to do, as for Anon, I don’t doubt for second that shit is gonna escalate; they are not going to take this in the ass, there are going to be some serious reprocussions for these shenagians. What they maybe is up in the air, I to hope that what ever griefing is gonna go down doesn’t excerbate the situation.

N. Cochran (AKA: BardChild)

dam and i was going to FIGHT THE POWAH! tomorrow.

[...] (11:50pm, Jul 26): AT&T has begun to allow access to 4chan again. This entry was posted in Current events, F***ed up, Tech and games and tagged 4chan, internet. [...]

I don’t know about anyone else, but 4chan has ground to a halt. The whole site, www, orz, cgi, img, doesn’t matter.

It could be a DDOS attack, or it could be AT&T tweaking their blockade to cover the whole site.

Edit: Also not loading via Sprint, looks like a DDOS this time. There is loading activity, which indicates a DDOS (and not some maintenance or downtime).

QUOTE:It could be a DDOS attack, or it could be AT&T tweaking their blockade to cover the whole site.

I hope it isn’t the latter they are already in a vat full of shit…

/B/ Stop DDOS’ing it’s fucking up the site, quit it you retards!

now… can we track this DDoS attack and see if it’s the one some sources said AT&T tried to block? and if so, who’s behind it?

Minor update:

4chan has indeed ground to a halt. Someone is likely performing a DDoS once they realized AT&T has undone the block. And isn’t the reason AT&T did the block in the first place was because a lot of their users were infected and unknowingly participating in the DDoSing? So once they unblocked it, the sh*t came back again almost immediately. It might be possible that 4chan will now receive a whole bunch of free help from AT&T and other affected ISPs to fund the culprits and deal with them appropriately.

[...] has apparently admitted to blocking traffic to “portions of the internet site 4chan.org”, which is easily tested by comparison of a user’s connection+response to the results of a site [...]

It appears this is a separate attack. It wouldn’t make sense for AT&T to block img.4chan.org and leave the rest online, if AT&T was having site-wide DDOS issues. (And, again, there’s that whole AT&T-didn’t-inform-anyone-they-were-blocking-the-site-debacle).

I suspect the high-profile attention that 4chan has received over the past 24 hours, has driven experienced DDOS’ers to launch new attacks. The anontalk virus may also be coming into play here, but I doubt it is the reason all of 4chan is down.

That virus didn’t have the power to do shut down 4chan yesterday, I doubt it multiplied while AT&T was cut off.

Why do I have a nagging feeling that AT&T is gonna scapegoat all this on to some nameless hacker and get away scot-free

’cause you have eyes on your face and something more than air between your ears. at any rate there’s enough shaken cages to make their claims sound fake to the bulk of the public.

yah its a ddos well maybe now at&t well go after the bastards.

QUOTE: Why do I have a nagging feeling that AT&T is gonna scapegoat all this on to some nameless hacker and get away scot-free

Since they have admitted blocking it, the blame will likely go on some mid-level manager who “made the call” to block access to img. It is very seldom in (at least American) corporations that those actually responsible take the heat.

I doubt at&t will do jack, they might even use this a smokescreen, make some bullshit up and blame it on someone else. Or do something that makes them look like heroes by find out who the hell is griefing the fucking out of everyone and then play “Pass the blame” on to 4chan or someone else

The current DDoS is going to be the perfect cover for AT&T, they can just claim it was this DDoS the whole time…

QUOTE: Since they have admitted blocking it, the blame will likely go on some mid-level manager who “made the call” to block access to img.

Most likely, scapegoating is what corporate America does best.

I will say that ATT&T has better press agents and will try to spin this however they think is best.

4chan doesn’t have that, but they do have more loyalists, the need for lulz, and they really don’t forget about these types of things.

while some of us did get momentary access to /b/ and /r9k/, it seems that the entirety of 4chan is down now. several people have reported that they can’t even access the home page.

something might be amiss here.

QUOTE: The current DDoS is going to be the perfect cover for AT&T, they can just claim it was this DDoS the whole time…

MTE anon!

From the status.4chan

CURRENT STATUS:
www > DOWN
orz : tmp > DOWN
zip : bin > DOWN
img : dat > UP
cgi : nov > DOWN?
rs > UP
dis > DOWN

it’s a full-on ddos this time, i’m not even in the united states and status.4chan.org reads as everything timing out. so it’s not THE MAN this time, just the usual nonsense from idiots trying to get attention by hacking a popular website

QUOTE: The current DDoS is going to be the perfect cover for AT&T, they can just claim it was this DDoS the whole time…

Or something to the effect of

“We did them and the internet a favor. Looks what happens the second we take the block off? Everything shuts down again. This is a system we need in place as a security, even a national security measure, Mr. O’Reilly. Because if terrorist were to begin using sites like that to pass coded messages, and we found out about it, we would need to be able to stop that. We tested a needed system at a time that was appropriate based on that site’s past activity. The system worked, and we will use it again if and when we need to.”

Mr. O’Reilly: Well as you know, we have done stories, I have done stories about how vile a place that website is, and about how there is often pictures of child pornography and beastiality on there. It is just a hateful, disgusting, vile place. And I think you for joining me Mr. CEO of AT&T.

Doesn’t matter, it’s funny, I got my lulz worth staying up for this.

5 ‘nets it’s anontalk

CLICK MAH LINK! RAGE WAR ON ANONTALK AND SAVE CATURDAY.
/b/rothers, our time has come again when we stand up for interwebz.

i just got through to the homepage for a second. but then it went down again.

MONDAY, JULY 27, 2009

Cogent Communications has joined the club—they’re now blocking all of 4chan. I can’t even access the site at this point.

We’re working on it…
BY MOOT @ 4:01 AM

I’m not saying it’s right, but when AT&T made me angry I just stopped paying them.

It took them a few months to catch on. :)

QUOTE: Cogent Communications has joined the club—

So this is separate from the DDoS? and also I wonder if moot means by ‘the club’ that there’s anyone else blocking besides Cognet?

I got through momentarily on img.

Brighthouse here

According to AT&T’s statement, they claimed moot did not take the necessary actions. Anyone know what they were asking him to do? How is it his fault if sites DDoS him?

AT&T was apparently lying and/or covering their own asses, m00t said they never tried to contact him.

I’m quite confident that this is going to get much bigger before it is all over.

QUOTE: I’m quite confident that this is going to get much bigger before it is all over.

mte

OMFG

“Monday, July 27, 2009

Cogent Communications has joined the club—they’re now blocking all of 4chan. I can’t even access the site at this point.

We’re working on it…

by moot @ 4:01 AM ”

THIS IS BAD!

So maybe it wasn’t about censorship, just a wrong technical move. Still, somehow it just doesn’t add up that they would nullroute an IP, and a couple of hours later restore everything to normal. You start to think, was this really neccessary?

moot himself cannot access 4chan. Not good! What will Anon do now? I would keep my eyes on the Encyclopaedia Dramatica page guys, we are only going to be able to rally on ED.

http://encyclopediadramatica.com/AT%26T_Blocks_4chan

Listen – when AT&T blocked the site – when they notified who ever they needed to notify at 4chan, you can bet AT&T covered their arse and notified the FCC as well. If they didn’t notify theFCC then I’m sure we will hear about it.

But I buy into the theory about AT&T trying to stop the DDoS attacks from its own network. I’m guessing the the number users attacking the site were so large, it was quicker blocking the site then trying to cut those individual customers off one by one. Most likely unknowing customers infected by a virus.

Then Moot put up such a huge stink about it – AT&T said screw it, let Moot have his way and opened the flood gates and all the users started attacking again.

Now everyone wants to blame AT&T when infact they might have actually been trying to help keep the site up while AT&T dealt with it internally.

Lets remember, Iphone network was NOT blocked. If AT&T was going to block 4chan due to censorship – iphone network would’ve been blocking it too. This lends to theory that AT&T was blocking DDoS attacks originating from DSL and Uverse customers.

Mr. Price… you say you are biased to the consumer, so your saying 4chan is your customer or AT&T’s customer?? I believe Dreu was trying to say you were biased to 4chan, not the consumer. Willing to believe 4chan over AT&T instead of remaining neutral between the 2 companies.

Couldn’t AT&T handled it differently? Of course. Simple statement saying massive attacks to 4chan are originating from AT&T network and we’ve blocked the site to our customers while we deal with the security issue.

But the theories saying AT&T is out to get 4chan or out to cover their butt so the coincidence of a DDoS attack is perfect cover….just ridiculous.

I am customer of AT&T and wasn’t happy to hear they blocked a site, grant you , I’ve never visited the site, but AT&T blocking a site is a little disconcerting. But I will give them the benefit of the doubt until proven otherwise.

Brock, AT&T has never notified the FCC when blocking a site. I don’t know what regulatory world you have come from… but the FCC acts in a punitive manner, not as a gatekeeper. It just doesn’t work the way you think it does.

I’ll put it this way..I would hope they would notify them as a way to backup their claim they notified 4chan. At this point…not enough facts are out to decide who is lying and who isn’t.

[...] In addition to starting a war with the internet’s most skilled collection of cyber-rogues, Central Gadget says that AT&T may also be breaking the law. [...]

[...] In addition to starting a war with the internet’s most skilled collection of cyber-rogues, Central Gadget says that AT&T may also be breaking the law. [...]

[...] AT&T Blocking Access to Portions of 4chan (Updated Again … [...]

WAT

Ummmm, hellooooooooooo! We’re 3 days away from the opening of Defcon17. Anyone else seeing a connection? Anyone? Buehler?

[...] at least attempted to contact) the owners of 4chan, which Moot vehemently denies. AT&T told CentralGadget that they have specific reasons why they blocked these parts of the site, but they would not [...]

Just for the record, I noticed img.4chan.org was blocked at around 4pm on the 24th, which is a good while earlier than all the reports seem to say. I’m in the Sacramento, CA region. I did a traceroute and it died right at hop 4, well within the SBC/AT&T network, while a traceroute to the front page went through just fine.

[...] (or at least attempted to contact) the owners of 4chan, which Moot vehemently denies. AT&T told CentralGadget that they have specific reasons why they blocked these parts of the site, but they would not reveal [...]

[...] (or at least attempted to contact) the owners of 4chan, which Moot vehemently denies. AT&T told CentralGadget that they have specific reasons why they blocked these parts of the site, but they would not [...]

[...] (or at least attempted to contact) the owners of 4chan, which Moot vehemently denies. AT&T told CentralGadget that they have specific reasons why they blocked these parts of the site, but they would not [...]

[...] (or at least attempted to contact) the owners of 4chan, which Moot vehemently denies. AT&T told CentralGadget that they have specific reasons why they blocked these parts of the site, but they would not [...]

[...] AT&T Blocking Access to Portions of 4chan AT&T has confirmed that they are “currently blocking portions of the internet site 4chan.org”, but states that they are “following the practices of their policy department.” [...]

[...] (or at least attempted to contact) the owners of 4chan, which Moot vehemently denies. AT&T told CentralGadget that they have specific reasons why they blocked these parts of the site, but they would not [...]

[...] It’s likely the work of 4chan message board goons, upset over a report that AT&T was blocking the site for its broadband customers. [...]

[...] and why the ban was put in place, but only 15-16 hours after the 4chan-block was first reported, CentralGadget and TechCrunch now reports that AT&T has indeed confirmed that the block has been [...]

[...] 8: According to CentralGadget, 4chan is now UNBLOCKED by AT&T. AT&T says they were «following the practices of their [...]

[...] put on 4Chan. Apparently AT&T was following its policy that appears quite strange. AT&T has requested the team behind 4Chan to introduce changes which they didn’t and as a result they had to get [...]

AT&T still reports directly to Ch3n3y.

[...] (or at least attempted to contact) the owners of 4chan, which Moot vehemently denies. AT&T told CentralGadget that they have specific reasons why they blocked these parts of the site, but they would not [...]

[...] often troublemaking – userbase against it. AT&T confirmed the partial block to the blog CentralGadget, claiming the company was “following the practices of their policy department.” Others [...]

[...] often troublemaking – userbase against it. AT&T confirmed the partial block to the blog CentralGadget, claiming the company was “following the practices of their policy department.” Others [...]

[...] often troublemaking – userbase against it. AT&T confirmed the partial block to the blog CentralGadget, claiming the company was “following the practices of their policy department.” Others [...]

[...] 8: According to CentralGadget, 4chan is now UNBLOCKED by AT&T. AT&T says they were «following the practices of their [...]

[...] often troublemaking – userbase against it. AT&T confirmed the partial block to the blog CentralGadget, claiming the company was “following the practices of their policy department.” Others [...]

[...] 8: According to CentralGadget, 4chan is now UNBLOCKED by AT&T. AT&T says they were following the practices of their [...]

[...] In addition to starting a war with the internet’s most skilled collection of cyber-rogues, Central Gadget says that AT&T may also be breaking the law. [...]

[...] addition to starting a war with the internet’s most skilled collection of cyber-rogues, Central Gadget says that AT&T may also be breaking the law. Under the FCC’s Comcast/BitTorrent ruling, Internet Service Providers may only slow or [...]

[...] back up-For Great Justice. 27 07 2009 According to some updated articles, as well as the fact that I can now access the site, it seems that AT&T has lifted its block on [...]

[...] often troublemaking – userbase against it. AT&T confirmed the partial block to the blog CentralGadget, claiming the company was “following the practices of their policy department.” Others [...]

So when moot announced early this morning that Comcast was joining in blocking parts of 4chan, did he just jump the gun? That statement has been retracted from the status page. Was there also a relatively brief DDoS happening last night, or was it something else (like site maintenance)? Lastly, since AT&T has reportedly unblocked img.4chan.org, why does the “AT&T is blocking” statement remain on the 4chan site, the 4chan status page, and the twitter. The last one I can understand, but not the first two.

[...] confirmed the block via CentralGadget, claiming the company was “following the practices of their policy department.” This [...]

[...] (or at least attempted to contact) the owners of 4chan, which Moot vehemently denies. AT&T told CentralGadget that they have specific reasons why they blocked these parts of the site, but they would not [...]

[...] CentralGadget.com reports they spoke to a member of AT&T corporate: AT&T has confirmed that they are “currently blocking portions of the internet site 4chan.org”, but states that they are “following the practices of their policy department.” [...]

@K

there was some ddos’ing last night and most of 4chan was down, there was some talk also about Comcast blocking 4chan

[...] actually has a pretty good timeline on what happened as well as the ongoing conversation – much of which includes calls to action against AT&T.  Lost among the various accounts is a report – mentioned in a 4chan community alert on [...]

[...] AT&T blocking parts of 4chan. [...]

[...] 8: According to CentralGadget, 4chan is now UNBLOCKED by AT&T. AT&T says they were «following the practices of their [...]

[...] [via CentralGadget] [...]

[...] (or at least attempted to contact) the owners of 4chan, which Moot vehemently denies. AT&T told CentralGadget that they have specific reasons why they blocked these parts of the site, but they would not [...]

[...] (or at least attempted to contact) the owners of 4chan, which Moot vehemently denies. AT&T told CentralGadget that they have specific reasons why they blocked these parts of the site, but they would not [...]

[...] that a corporation can block or censor websites at will. Can AT&T do that legally? According to Central Gadget it cannot: Under the FCC’s Comcast/BitTorrent ruling, Internet Service Providers may only slow or [...]

Bard, thank you very much. I had gotten a little confused because I had experienced downtime late last night, and I am on Brighthouse. That was during the time when moot announced that Comcast was participating in the blocking as well, and that he was unable to access the site. I woke up today to find the DDoS had stopped and that most of the servers were running, and the Comcast announcement had been retracted. At this time, the img, cgi, and orz servers appear to be running fine, but the zip server remains extremely slow (I would hardly call it functional).

[...] at least attempted to contact) the owners of 4chan, which Moot vehemently denies. AT&T told CentralGadget that they have specific reasons why they blocked these parts of the site, but they would not [...]

[...] often troublemaking – userbase against it. AT&T confirmed the partial block to the blog CentralGadget, claiming the company was “following the practices of their policy department.” Others [...]

AT&T makes a press release

I hope HTML works if not here is the raw link
“http://www.att.com/gen/press-room?pid=4800&cdvn=news&newsarticleid=26970″

I have just spoken with an AT&T representative, Link Hoewing, who told me that the IP address in question was temporarily blocked because it was the origin of a denial of service attack. If this assertion is correct (and there does not appear to be any reason to question it, because AT&T has actually *advocated* adoption of the FCC’s “four principles”), AT&T was engaged in reasonable (and, in fact, laudable) network management when it blocked that IP address.

Alas, advocates of onerous regulation of the Internet (misleadingly dubbed “network neutrality”) appear to be willing to take advantage of virtually any incident at all to accuse ISPs of censorship. We must therefore tread very carefully and refrain from making accusations unless we can verify that such practices are indeed occurring.

–Brett Glass

Brent,

I agree. However, and I must say however, AT&T did not notify the administrator/owner of 4chan in any kind of a timely manner, and they were in no way forthcoming with information that they were in fact blocking img.4chan for their customers. In fact, some reports (the validity of which is in question) have said that some customer service reps were told by AT&T management to deny that the blocking was in fact occurring. AT&T did not release an official press release about this incident until today, and the blocking began as early as Friday. This is an unacceptably long time for them to block a site without notification or even admission. If their actions, and specifically the lack of notification/acknowlegment, are creating some backlash for them, hopefully they will use better judgment the next time something like this needs to be done (needs to be done from their viewpoint of maintaining a solid network backbone and filtering out malicious attacks). In other words, I hope we all learned something from this.

[...] and often troublemaking – userbase against it. AT&T confirmed the partial block to the blog CentralGadget, claiming the company was “following the practices of their policy department.” Others [...]

moot has updated the 4chan status page: http://status.4chan.org/

Here is the text:

Monday, July 27, 2009

Here’s what happened:

For the past three weeks, 4chan has been under a constant DDoS attack. We were able to filter this specific type of attack in a fashion that was more or less transparent to the end user.

Unfortunately, as an unintended consequence of the method used, some Internet users received errant traffic from one of our network switches. A handful happened to be AT&T customers.

In response, AT&T filtered all traffic to and from our img.4chan.org IPs (which serve /b/ & /r9k/) for their entire network, instead of only the affected customers. AT&T did not contact us prior to implementing the block. Here is their statement regarding the matter.

In the end, this wasn’t a sinister act of censorship, but rather a bit of a mistake and a poorly executed, disproportionate response on AT&T’s part. Whoever pulled the trigger on blackholing the site probably didn’t anticipate [nor intend] the consequences of doing so.

We’re glad to see this short-lived debacle has prompted renewed interest and debate over net neutrality and internet censorship—two very important issues that don’t get nearly enough attention—so perhaps this was all just a blessing in disguise.

Aside from that, I’ll also add that there is some big news due later this week. Keep an eye on the News page, Twitter, and global message for updates.

As always, I can be reached at moot@4chan.org.

—

PS: If any companies would like to hook us up with some better hardware, feel free! The architecture we’ve got powering this large and influential beast is really quite embarrassing. ( ._.)

[...] contacted (or at least attempted to contact) the owners of 4chan, which moot denies. AT&T told CentralGadget that they have specific reasons why they blocked these parts of the site, but they would not [...]

It appears 4chan will be moving soon. This latest round of problems might be related to the move (not caused by or a result of, just related):

http://mailman.nanog.org/pipermail/nanog/2009-July/012186.html

[...] the ban on 4chan, crisis averted I guess.  Too bad 4chan is experience DDoS attacks at the moment. More info here. Categories: Random Thoughts Tags: Comments (0) Trackbacks (0) Leave a comment [...]

[...] often troublemaking – userbase against it. AT&T confirmed the partial block to the blog CentralGadget, claiming the company was “following the practices of their policy department.” Others [...]

[...] CentralGadget: AT&T has confirmed that they are “currently blocking portions of the internet site 4chan.org”, but states that they are “following the practices of their policy department.” [...]

[...] often troublemaking – userbase against it. AT&T confirmed the partial block to the blog CentralGadget, claiming the company was “following the practices of their policy department.” Others [...]

And once again, it NEVER fails with the incessant lying, as lying is a way of life for these hacker creeps. I salute AT&T for blocking viruses, trojans and nasty spider scripts, as that is what the REAL truth is as to WHY AT&T has flashed the middle finger [blocked] to 4 Chan. Why should AT&T waste time and energy in dealing with viruses, trojans and uncontrollable script programs emanating from the 4 Chan site?

I don’t condone censorship and I certainly don’t condone lies “in the name of lulz”. The only thing 4 Chan has proven again and again, is that they are infantile and violent. A bunch of two year olds who go on tirades. And just like an out of control two year old, they need some REAL hard slaps from the school of hard knocks.

Any consequences or denial of internet access to AT&T customers due to NAZI actions emanating from 4 Chan [or any other hacker creeps for that matter], I pray that they are caught, rounded up, prosecuted beyond the extent of the law, thrown in a windowless cell and locked up forever until the day they die.

I commend AT&T for taking the step forward and I sincerely hope that other ISP’S follow suit ASAP. ENOUGH IS ENOUGH. Hackers cause destruction, chaos, waste everyones time and energy. Normal people on the net are SICK AND TIRED of these two year old tantrum antics that 4 Chan displays on a daily basis. These hacker creeps really and truly need to GROW THE F*** UP.

hey, ace… read up on the situations before you go on a rant.

No more soap-box for you.

I thought only Australia bans websites.

[...] quando domenica il colosso della telefonia statunitense ha bloccato l’accesso a 4chan senza dare tante spiegazioni, si è immediatamente gridato alla censura: un ISP che decide [...]

[...] [來源：CentralGadget] [...]

[...] Moot, the owner of 4chan, got the word out that he had received no contact from AT&T.  At this point, and through a process of elimination, folks concluded that AT&T had blocked the website. [...]

[...] (or at least attempted to contact) the owners of 4chan, which Moot vehemently denies. AT&T told CentralGadget that they have specific reasons why they blocked these parts of the site, but they would not [...]

[...] AT&T Blocking Access to Portions of 4chan (Updated Again … [...]

[...] stock price of AT&T by spreading rumors on its CEO’s death. AT&T stated in the report here that it was a “policy” procedure that let them to block certain portions of the site. [...]

No idea why AT&T blocked this site. Let the internet be open and accessible by all!

Glad its now unblocked!

[...] was previously blocked by AT&T last year after a wave of DDOS attacks leveled at the imageboard caused the service [...]