FCC Rebuffed Distil Networks' Offer of Help After Claimed 2017 DDoS Attack, Executive Says
Distil Networks "approached the FCC" in May 2017 "to offer Distil's services for free" to help the agency fix problems with its electronic comment filing system application programming interface caused by what the FCC claimed was a distributed denial-of-service attack,…
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
Communications Daily is required reading for senior executives at top telecom corporations, law firms, lobbying organizations, associations and government agencies (including the FCC). Join them today!
said Chief Product and Strategy Officer Rami Essaid in a statement. It was one of at least four software and cybersecurity firms that pitched their services in the days after the 2017 DDoS incident, according to a package of a thousand-plus pages of emails that American Oversight received in response to a Freedom of Information Act request (see 1806060032). The FCC "denied [Distil's] offer, claiming that they cannot filter out 'free speech,'" Essaid said. "However, this is not a matter of free speech -- bots are not real people." Former FCC Chief Information Officer David Bray disputed earlier this week a report that the agency pushed a false narrative after the 2017 incident that the system also had been victim of a cyberattack three years previously (see 1705100062 and 1806050046).