They claim that because the FCC uses Akamai as a CDN, that the FCC is immune from DDOS attacks. The FCC comment section is heavily reliant on a database, and you could simply overwhelm the database to DDOS that site. I would bet it is unlikely that the FCC utilized a cache for the queries.
I too think that the DDOS is bollocks but I wouldn't go so far as to describe the reddit comment as flawed - MNGrrl presents quite a lot of additional evidence alongside the Akamai assertion. If you have some spare time it is worth reading/skimming the rest of the reddit thread. Whilst you are at it, look at the posting history of the highly rated commentators for some contextual bias hints. Follow links as well and lose a lot of time 8)
On balance the official story really does not stack up and I think a fully tooled up investigative journo could tear the FCC to pieces if given enough time and motivation to dot the Is and cross the Ts. The keyword there is motivation ...
But anyway, their excuse that it needs to be secret is BS, DDOS protection methods are widespread and not very secret as it is. They probably just want to keep it secret, because they don't actually have proper DDOS protection.
This.
At what point did the government become a special interest group which does not exist to protect the nation it serves? Providing good security advice is their job.
Even if they do have some super secret techniques, keeping them secret is not a strategy, it's what idiots who don't know anything about technology or computers or network security would do.
I would trust Cloudflare's staff over the FCC's I.T. department every day of the week, and I hate Cloudflare.
As a constitutionalist, the real problem as I have condensed it is that the balance between providing for the common defense has completely overshadowed things like securing the blessings of liberty. Our gov is increasingly leaning authoritarian, and the populace has allowed it.
That aside, I would agree with you.
The primary purpose of cloudflare is to hide the IP address of the server and filter packets on IP level. It does not magically protects from any attack, especially on application level.
It is wrong to assume that there is a universal automatic solution against DDOS. Neither CDN nor Cloudflare nor REST API (how?) can help with this.
Realistically (or perhaps otherwise), what can Americans without enough money to lobby individually, do to prevent the FCC acting against our greater good, especially in the face of evidence that they are maliciously acting against the greater good? I have already called all of my senators and congressfolk, as well as written the president (for all that will do). This does not feel effective.
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