[Updated] AT&T Picks a Fight… With 4chan - July 27th, 2009

It’s hard to say at this point exactly what the brass at AT&T were thinking. Apparently they’ve decided the best reaction to DDoS attacks targeting 4chan is to completely block access to the site’s affected boards. The move affects users on their landline networks only.

I don’t think it’s necessary to go into too much depth on just how bad a move this is for AT&T. Corporate tech-giant or not, one simply cannot randomly instate censorship on the Internet, especially when it comes to 4chan.

As Mashable points out, 4chan is nothing short of notorious for their involvement (both alleged and obvious) in Internet attacks. This in no way makes it acceptable for a major ISP to block portions of the site, even if the action is seemingly validated by a concern for security. DDoS attacks happen all the time, to a number of sites. If the answer were always as simple as blocking them, there wouldn’t be much of an Internet left.

As of this moment, 4chan.org seems to be down. Likely it’s been knocked out due to the influx of traffic brought on by the news of the block.

Immediately following the discovery of the block, talk began stirring about retaliation. Anyone who hasn’t lived under a rock for the past few years knows that no Web-based entity knows retaliation like 4chan, or in this case, Anonymous.

AT&T may well learn that the quick option isn’t always the best, and that dealing with DDoS attacks may be preferable to becoming the target of them.

From 4chan’s status blog:

It’s come to our attention that AT&T is filtering/blocking img.4chan.org (/b/ & /r9k/) for many of their customers. There is no remedy at this time.

If you’ve been affected, I would advise you call or write customer support and corporate immediately.

UPDATE: Some coverage on TechCrunch, Digg, reddit, and Google News. Also, note that AT&T has yet to contact us.

In the status message, Moot urges users to “call or write customer support,” though I’d be surprised to see such docility from those affected. More updates to come.

[UPDATE]: Wisebread shows a conversation taking place in Reddit comment threads showing that both XKCD creator Randall Munroe and Imgur creator Alan Schaaf have effectively become the first hard-backers of the inevitable retaliation to take place against AT&T.

Munroe: What IP blocks do their corporate offices have? If they’re really cutting off my trashy time-wasting web entertainment, I’m cutting off theirs.

Schaaf: Let me know if you find out. Imgur is prepared to forward all their images; I hope they like goatse.

[UPDATE]: AT&T has released this comment:

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.

4chan’s status blog update:

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.

So, it looks as though the official label for this situation would be Crisis Averted. Part of me is slightly disappointed, while the saner parts are overjoyed that AT&T caught on and corrected their mistake. Either way, it’s a good resolution.