(WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) — Telecommunications provider AT&T (www.att.com) restored access to images-based bulletin board 4chan (img.4chan.org) this morning after temporarily blocking the site since late last night.
Despite the growing public outcry that alleged the teleco was blocking the site because of 4chan’s adult content, the company says it blocked access to prevent a denial of service attack that was affecting 4chan from spreading to its own customers.
AT&T released this statement addressing the block:
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 forums contain a range of text and images in the areas of Japanese anime and manga, video games, music, and photography.
The website has been under attack for three weeks now, according to the 4chan status page.
4chan explains that an “unintended consequence” of its DDoS attack resolution resulted in a handful of AT&T customers receiving errent traffic from one of its network switches.
The website says that AT&T responded to this by filtering all traffic to and from 4chan’s IPs for its entire network rather than only the affected customers without contacting the website before it implemented the block.
4chan administrator “Moot” says the block was not intended as a “sinister act of censorship, but rather a bit of a mistake and a poorly executed, disproportionate response on AT&T’s part,” adding that the incident is a “blessing in disguise” in that it “prompted renewed interest and debate over net neutrality and internet censorship”.
