FCC website hit by attacks after 'net neutrality' proposal

The U.S. Federal Communications Commission said Monday that its website was hit by deliberate denial of service attacks after the telecommunications regulator was criticized by comedian John Oliver for its plan to reverse "net neutrality" rules.

The attacks came soon after Oliver on Sunday urged viewers to file electronic comments with the FCC opposing the plan unveiled by FCC Chairman Ajit Pai to reverse rules implemented under President Barack Obama that boosted government regulatory powers over internet service providers.

Pai's plan faces an initial vote on May 18.ADVERTISINGOliver in his HBO show "Last Week Tonight" owned by Time Warner Inc (TWX.N) urged viewers to use a website purchased by the show that takes visitors directly to an FCC page to file comments.

The proposal has received more than 100,000 comments since Sunday, a sign of intense interest in a proposal that could reshape the future of the internet.

The FCC said it "was subject to multiple distributed denial-of-service attacks. These were deliberate attempts by external actors to bombard the FCC’s comment system with a high amount of traffic to our commercial cloud host."

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