The Tech Herald

AT&T blocks 4Chan - Is this censorship or the response to an attack? (Update)

by Steve Ragan - Jul 27 2009, 22:02

Is AT&T up to something shady or are they defending the network?

Update 4:

AT&T has issued a statement:

Beginning Friday, an AT&T customer was impacted by a denial-of-service attack stemming from IP addresses connected to img.4chan.org. To prevent this attack from disrupting service for the impacted AT&T customer, and to prevent the attack from spreading to impact our other customers, AT&T temporarily blocked access to the IP addresses in question for our customers. This action was in no way related to the content at img.4chan.org; our focus was on protecting our customers from malicious traffic.

Overnight Sunday, after we determined the denial-of-service threat no longer existed, AT&T removed the block on the IP addresses in question. We will continue to monitor for denial-of-service activity and any malicious traffic to protect our customers.

Update 3:

This came into our inbox a few minutes ago.

"It is not the first time that AT&T has been accused of censorship. In 2007, AT&T tampered with the audio stream of a Pearl Jam concert, which was webcast over AT&T’s network. During the performance and without the permission of the band, AT&T edited from the stream lyrics which were critical of then President George Bush."  [Source]

AT&T has still not issued any explanations for the block placed on 4Chan. At this time, 4Chan is online for most everyone, but slow due to a rumored DDoS attack.

Update 2:

From Indianapolis, 4Chan is online and unblocked at 5:40 a.m. EST. Reports on Twitter are scattered with the majority reporting they cannot access the site. Talk on IRC is that there is a larger DDoS taking place, unrelated to the AT&T issue. We're working to confirm this information.

Update:

As this story was being written, some users on Twitter are reporting that AT&T has lifted the block. Others are reporting this, following with the news that they promptly replaced it. There are also rumors that 4Chan itself is suffering from a DDoS attack.

Original Article:

The Internet was on fire late last night and early this morning, as news spread that 4Chan was being blocked by AT&T. What is still not fully known is the cause of the block, which AT&T has confirmed. Was the block the result of actions taken after a DDoS attack on AT&T’s network, or blatant censorship?

For those who don't know, 4Chan was started by moot, sometimes known as Christopher Poole. His creation, 4chan.org, is responsible for most of the popular Internet culture you see today. If you know what “oh hai” is in reference to, then you have 4Chan to thank for it. If you have ever been “Rickrolled” then you have the “/b/tards” on 4Chan to thank for that too.

One thing is certain; 4Chan might be strange to some, to others it is just a way of things online. There are rules, but for the most part posts to 4Chan are far from moderated. There are games too, The Game to be exact. If you just realized that you lost The Game, this is yet another Internet fad to hand to 4Chan. Fads aside, the largest national media claim to fame for 4Chan were more than likely all the protests against the Church of Scientology.

Back to the issue at hand, AT&T has confirmed the block. The confirmation comes from support staff, and someone who spoke to CentralGadget. The only thing CentralGadget was told is that AT&T is blocking access to 4Chan for reasons they would not disclose, and that the block was “following the practices of their policy department.”

AT&T support is reporting, “The web site http://img.4chan.org has been blackholed – the IP tech support contact was informed that the site would be blocked before it was blocked,” to anyone who asked.

Shon Elliott, Senior Network Engineer with unWired Broadband wrote that unWired issued a similar block because of ACK scans from 207.126.64.181 (IP used by 4Chan). Elliott’s block was made with support from one of the owners at the co-location facility that hosts the 4Chan servers.

“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,” Elliott said.

Some users on Twitter, as well as IRC, and other places online are in an outrage over this presumed censorship. They are looking for loyal 4Chan users to act.

“This censorship is not only a huge inconvenience to the users of 4chan, but a bold move showing AT&T's true intentions: Telecom corporations' control over internet content. Undoubtedly, it is only the first shot fired in the war for net neutrality,” wrote one Anon on CNN’s iReport.

Others are calling for revenge raids, which would only make matters worse. Yet, some are attempting to prevail to level heads.

“If it's about Net Neutrality, they have a war coming on. If it's about the DDoS like the rumor says, we are getting out panties in a bunch for nothing. These knee-jerk reactions will probably just engender other knee-jerk reactions that will get us boned over in the long run. I know most of the people doing raids didn't even bother to read up to this part but if we really rush in with no idea we could be setting ourselves up for a nasty surprise,” wrote another Anon on a backup forum used for communications during the AT&T outage.

This is a valid point. If the blocks are related to attacks, AT&T is well within their right to block access to 4Chan. Still, if it was a DDoS attack they were defending against, why didn’t they just come out and say so from the beginning of the block?

The silence from AT&T is making things worse. With luck this silence will be broken soon, as more and more AT&T staffers wake and see the updates on Twitter, Digg, and Reddit just to name a few places carrying the news.

The Tech Herald has contacted AT&T for comment. We will post more information as soon as we have it.

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