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The comment system of FCC fell prone to a DDoS attack when it was seeking net neutrality comments, but investigators have only confirmed apprehensions. A report from the Inspector General of the agency has indicated that there wasn’t any evidence of such an attack. The problems of comment system were more likely due to large-scale opposition to the net neutrality repeal. It was helped by John Oliver in Last Week Tonight and it shouldn’t be considered an untimely hacking campaign. FCC Chairman Pai tried to spin the report in a statement, portraying the false DDoS reports as the products of the prior Administration and former Chief Information Officer David Bray. The FCC chairman said that CIO’s subordinates were afraid to disagree with his belief that there was a cyber attack.

Pai also claimed that the report disproves the conspiracy theory that he and his office knew the DDoS claims weren’t discovered. He stressed that the FCC has focused on refurbishing the struggling commenting system and blamed former government so that this kind of failure didn’t occur again. The problem is that the FCC didn’t exactly shoot down Bray’s claims when new. There may be a degree of truth to Pai’s assertion that he couldn’t talk about the Inspector General report. The agency was quick to stonewall requests for evidence that would prove or disprove the DDoS allegations. But, they didn’t release data shooting down the claims before the Inspector General even got involved. TechCrunch indicated that Bray’s subordinates don’t appear to have spoken up after he left.