A group of senate Democrats, including some of the Hill's loudest critics of FCC chair Ajit Pai's effort to roll back Title II, have asked the FBI to investigate the multiple distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks the agency said it suffered and which affected its online comment system.

Related: FCC CIO Says Agency Hit by DDoS Attack

“This particular attack may have denied the American people the opportunity to contribute to what is supposed to be a fair and transparent process, which in turn may call into question the integrity of the FCC’s rulemaking proceedings,” the senators wrote to acting FBI director Andrew McCabe. “We request that you update us on the status of the FBI’s investigation and brief us on this matter.”

The alleged attack appeared to be in connection with the net-neutrality proceeding. Signing the letter were Sens. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii), ranking member of the Senate Communications Subcommittee; Al Franken (D-Minn.); Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.); Ed Markey (D-Mass.); and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.).

Markey and Wyden have been leaders in the effort to preserve Title II.

Elsewhere, Fight for the Future also has asked for an investigation and documentation of the attack, and some in Congress have also asked the FCC for information about them, but the senators who signed the letter said the FBI needs to get involved given the seriousness of any cyberattack.

They asked the FBI to brief them "on this matter" by June 23.

A pair of Democratic senators has asked FCC chair Ajit Pai for more information on what the FCC has said were multiple DDoS attacks on its website that affected comments being posted there.

Related: FCC CIO Says Agency Hit by DDoS Attack

FCC chief information officer David Bray said the attacks "made it difficult for legitimate commenters to access and file with the FCC."

The key docket in terms of activity that could have been interrupted is net neutrality, where the FCC still managed to post more than a half a million comments since last week, attack or no. Among the senators' questions was whether any comments were prevented from being submitted and, if so, how many.

Sens. Ron Wyden of Oregon and Brian Schatz of Hawaii, the latter ranking member of the Senate Communications Subcommittee, sent a letter to Pai about the May 8 attack (which came in the wee hours of the morning following the May 7 airing of John Oliver's call, during HBO's Last Week Tonight, for a flood of comments in support of net neutrality.

Related: John Oliver Takes On Pai, Net Neutrality, Take II

They asked about the FCC's defenses against such an attack should it be repeated and wanted Pai to ensure the FCC provides other ways to comment as a workaround, such as a dedicated e-mail account.

“Any potentially hostile cyber activities that prevents Americans from being able to participate in a fair and transparent process must be treated as a serious issue,” the senators said.

Specifically, they requested the following information by June 8:

1. “Please provide details as to the nature of the DDoS attacks, including when the attacks began, when they ended, the amount of malicious traffic your network received, and an estimate of the number of devices that were sending malicious traffic to the FCC. To the extent that the FCC already has evidence suggesting which actor(s) may have been responsible for the attacks, please provide that in your response.
2. “Has the FCC sought assistance from other federal agencies in investigating and responding to these attacks? Which agencies have you sought assistance from? Have you received all of the help you have requested?
3. “Several federal agencies utilize commercial services to protect their websites from DDoS attacks. Does the FCC use a commercial DDoS protection service? If not, why not? To the extent that the FCC utilizes commercial DDoS protection products, did these work as expected? If not, why not?
4. “How many concurrent visitors is the FCC’s website designed to be able to handle? Has the FCC performed stress testing of its own website to ensure that it can cope as intended? Has the FCC identified which elements of its website are performance bottlenecks that limit the number of maximum concurrent visitors? Has the FCC sought to mitigate these bottlenecks? If not, why not?
5. “Did the DDoS attacks prevent the public from being able to submit comments through the FCC’s website? If so, do you have an estimate of how many individuals were unable to access the FCC website or submit comments during the attacks? Were any comments lost or otherwise affected?
6. “Will commenters who successfully submitted a comment — but did not receive a response, as your press release indicates — receive a response once your staff have addressed the DDoS and related technical issues?

While the letter did not question whether such an attack had happened, others have, including activist group Fight for the Future. 

"We think it's more than just coincidence that the FCC would cite a DDoS attack at the same time that John Oliver's call to make public comment on the FCC website in favor of net neutrality went viral," said Rashad Robinson, executive director of Color Of Change, a big Title II fan. "That said, we certainly hope to see a full investigation into what happened in order to ensure the integrity and full transparency of a key federal agency. But the unfortunate reality is that, after everything this administration has done to steal our rights as Americans, we wouldn't be surprised if this was merely an attempt to label the democratic exercise of free speech as a cyberattack.”

Net-neutrality activist group Fight for the Future says it is "extremely skeptical" about the FCC's claims of a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack Sunday night (May 7).

Related: FCC CIO Says Agency Hit by DDoS Attack

The FCC said the attack happened at midnight, which would be just after comedian John Oliver's Last Week Tonight segment calling on viewers to flood the FCC with comments calling for retaining the Title II classification for ISPs that FCC chair Ajit Pai wants to reverse.

Fight for the Future is calling on the FCC to release logs on the attack to an independent third party -- a security researcher or media outlet -- to independently verify the attack.

"The agency has a responsibility to maintain a functioning website to receive large numbers of comments and feedback from the public," said Evan Greer campaign director for Fight for the Future. "They can't blame DDoS attacks without proof, they need to fix this problem and ensure that comments on this important issue are not lost."

Fight for the Future said that the FCC is reportedly suggesting that the same thing happened in 2014 after Oliver took aim at then FCC chair Tom Wheeler, likening him to a dingo babysitter, which it points out was not widely reported at the time -- instead the reports were that the site had crashed from the weight of comments from Oliver-inspired net-neutrality supporters -- and makes them even more suspect of the current claim.

FCC spokespeople were not available for comment at press time.

The House took a serious, and mostly bipartisan, look Wednesday (Nov. 16) at the cybersecurity threat posed by the Internet of Things.

A joint hearing, "Understanding the Role of Connected Devices in Recent Cyber Attacks," was held in the Communications Subcommittee, chaired by Rep. Greg Walden (R-Ore.), and the Subcommittee on Commerce, Manufacturing and Trade, chaired by Rep. Michael C. Burgess (R-Texas).

The hearing was held in the wake of the distributed denial of service attack on Oct. 21 that restricted access to some major websites.

Apparently, the attack only employed 150,000 of about 1.5 million IoT devices still infected with the botnet that allows them to be commandeered to deliver similar or larger attacks in the future.

The seriousness of the issue was highlighted by the fact that the witnesses agreed that that the DDOS attack, which affected Netflix, Twitter and others -- was relatively benign compared to, say, an attack on critical systems that could cost lives.

Rep. Pete Olson (R-Tex.), a former Navy aviator, said the biggest threat to security is not bombs and missiles but ones and zeros and that, in the current environment, the government has to be proactive.

In fact, Republicans and Democrats were both using the R word (regulation) to talk about addressing the threat, as were all of the witnesses to some degree, though Dale Drew, SVP and chief security officer at Level 3 Communications, focused on standards and existing regs rather than new ones.

Rep. Anna Eshoo (D-Calif.), ranking member of the Communications Subcommittee, also suggested that approach. When one witness said a new government agency might be needed to deal with IoT cybersecutiry, she said that would not happen in the new administration. Walden joked that for every new agency created, they could eliminate two, a reference to President-elect Donald Trump's proposed requirement that two regulations be scrapped for every one added.

But Walden got serious, saying that the IoT cybersecurity issue was bipartisan and the Republican leadership would continue to address it.

Walden told the witnesses he was concerned about the government stepping into the marketplace, but primarily because he had heard cybersecurity witnesses before warn government to "first do not harm" and to be careful not to lock things into statute.

Rep. Frank Pallone (D-N.J.), ranking member of the Communications Subcommittee, pointed out that some have argued that regulating devices will constrain innovation.

Witness Bruce Schneier, adjunct Lecturer, Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, conceded the point, but said the government would definitely need to step in because the risk was too great. He said there's "a fundamental difference between your spreadsheet crashing and losing your data, and a connected car crashing and losing your life."

He emphasized that it was a catastrophic risk, crashing all connected cars, for example.

"It is an arms race, and the current edge is to the attacker," Schneier said, adding that given the scale of the Web and the ability to affect physical objects via IoT, "it might be that the Internet of fun and games is over."