AT&T Censorship Against 4chan.

[ProSlasher 176]

AT&T Blocks 4Chan /b/

 

Before you read further, I'd like to make a serious comment. Dear AT&T, The internet is now ours. You have no control of it anymore. Nobody has control of the internet. They lost control back in 1996 when AOL lost it's reign and phone companies were allowed to compete for speed. Your mistake was our advancement, and we will never allow you to bully us. You may think you are clever, but I can assure you, we as a group are more than you ever will hope to dream of. You can take a few of us down, but only the ones who are not part of us; the ones who do not stand with us. Don't fuck with us, the internet, or you will get your ass kicked. ~ProSlasher

 

 

Firing one of the first shots in the net neutrality war, AT&T has blocked 4chan’s /b/ image board. AT&T subscribers are unable to connect to /b/ and /r9k/ (both of which are hosted on img.4chan.org). However, subscribers can get on any of the so-called «worksafe» boards that 4chan.org offers.

 

The problem seems to be present only for wired connections only (AT&T Mobility customers are not affected). The problem is not caused by an DNS-error, as traceroutes indicates that AT&T is dropping img.4chan.org requests in the AT&T network.

 

Slashdot, Digg & Reddit are now running stories that are rapidly being upvoted about the topic.

http://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comment...to_img4chanorg/

 

As citizens of a free internet, what do we think about this kind of censorship?

 

UPDATED 1: Confirmation comes from several Reddit users that the website has indeed been blocked in a number of areas in the US and that it is not a technical issue.

 

UPDATED 2: A mere 5 hours after the problems were first reported on Reddit, sources on /b/ say that members of Anonymous has already started planning retaliation towards AT&T – amongst other things posting personal information about AT&T executives. One might quietly wonder if the AT&T megacorp. knows what’s it up against – with 4chan often being referred to as “The Internet Hate Machine”.

 

UPDATED 3: It turns out 15.5% of all US internet users use AT&T DSL, so this is quite a big problem. It will severly affect 4chan, both in regards of traffic and advertising volumes.

 

UPDATED 4: moot, the founder of 4chan, officially acknowledges the ban – calling for disconcerned users to «call or write customer support and corporate immediately»: http://status.4chan.org … Somehow, I get a feeling they’re gonna do a lot more than that, moot.

 

UPDATED 5: From rumors on /b/, it seems 4chan’s first retaliatory strike will be towards Randall Stephenson, CEO of AT&T. The Consumerist has more. There are also murmurs about the AT&T block being put into place because of supposed mass DDoS-attacks to and from img.4chan.org, but so far there has been no official, verifiable response from AT&T.

 

UPDATED 6: 4chan’s current gameplan evolving over at Encyclopedia Dramatica (Great stuff!). Also, from reports gathered on Reddit, it seems this block allegedly is because of massive DDoS-attacks against img.4chan.org. The reports doesn’t say anything about why AT&T would block 15.5% of all US internet users from using a specific website without any warning, though.

 

UPDATED 7: This article is now no. 1 on Digg.com – and has received more than 120.000 visitors in less than 10 hours. For now, I guess 4chan and Anon is showing AT&T its strength in pure numbers. Help spread the word, we need to raise awareness of this issue and Net neutrality.

 

UPDATED 8: According to CentralGadget, 4chan is now UNBLOCKED by AT&T. AT&T says they were «following the practices of their policy department», but that they have restored network-wide access to all areas of 4chan. Shitstorm averted? Also, according to CentralGadget, 4chan is currently down «due to a large DDOS attack, affecting most of 4chan’s servers.» This appears unrelated to the AT&T blockade, but may have been triggered by the high-profile attention that 4chan has received during the past 24 hours.

 

Source(s): http://www.centralgadget.com/att-blocking-...-of-4chan-2336/

http://encyclopediadramatica.com/ATT_Blocks_4chan

[ViperSRT3g 224]

lul, QFT.

[ProSlasher 176]

Oh yeah... It was blocked last night. Don't worry. I confirmed it too o.o

[XGhozt 410]

Source: http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/07/27/shits...er-ddos-attack/

 

AT&T has made even more people than usual angry when it started blocking/filtering parts of 4chan late last night. The popular message board, famous for being able to brew online (and offline) shitstorms like no other web property could, saw portions of its publication - including /r9k/ and the infamous /b/ - blocked for AT&T customers across the United States. Quickly enough, there was a lot of rallying going on, with 4chan members and fans virtually gathering to plot digital riots and all-round mayhem. An update on the situation as of 8 AM Eastern Time: access to 4chan has apparently been restored, with AT&T reportedly confirming the hours-long block of portions of the site, “following the practices of their policy department.” (see updates below)

 

AT&T went on to say that they contacted (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 disclose them, further stating that they have requested specific things and changes from 4chan’s owners to which they have failed to comply.

 

Meanwhile, 4chan is apparently under DDoS attack, supposedly because of the attention the site has been getting for the past 12 hours. The site is sometimes down, sometimes up but very slow, according to various reports. Note that this is not AT&T’s responsibility and quite possibly even the reason for the company to have made the dangerous decision of restricting access to the message board in the first place.

 

Updates coming, including some of the actions taken by 4chan members and friends to retaliate.

 

Update 1: this thread on Digg (760 votes and counting) pointed to a now-removed fake article at CNN’s iReport about the death of AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson.

 

Update 2: there’s pledge up at ThePoint to boycott AT&T and cancel the Internet service with them.

 

Update 3: YouTube alert

 

Update 4: an announcement on the Project AT&T forum reads: “All rioting/’war’/protests have been suspended for the time being.”

 

Update 5: AT&T got back to us with 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.

 

 

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 [email protected].

 

---

 

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. ( ._.)

 

Also, check out Project AT&T: http://z6.invisionfree.com/ProjectATT/index.php?act=idx

 

---

So apparently it's over, and was a misunderstanding.

[XGhozt 410]

AT&T Statement Regarding img.4chan.org

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.

So, essentially, whoever is DDoSing 4chan is not only hitting 4chan really hard, but they're forging their SYN packets to look like they come from elsewhere. In so doing, they're causing a moderate shitstorm at /b/, but for every abandoned SYN, they're sending 1+4 ACKs into the AT&T network.

[Speedskater 167]

ha people are going to be pissed

[HG-Bounder-X 121]

Shit, I'm surprised at all the shit that happened practically overnight because of this xD

[Speedskater 167]

Seriously, I would be pissed if Tmobile banned some sites.

[XGhozt 410]

You guys didn't read my post(s) did you.

[Ruler of War 169]

i read you post ghozt :D

[Major Zhuinden 128]

Wait, so why was there a DDOS from 4chan?

[Xthar 136]

You guys are stupid.... Read the damn posts newfags.

[ViperSRT3g 224]

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 [email protected].

 

---

 

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. ( ._.)

That's what happened. -.-

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[flower 0]

Haaa, I read it, Very interesting!