AT&T blocks 4chan? *Updated*

No confirmation as of yet from the AT&T side of things, but the internet is starting to freak out. AT&T is apparently blocking access to the img.4chan.org domain for its DSL customers. This means no access to the fabled (infamous?) /b/ message board.

4chan is a bulletin board system based around posting images and anonymous messages. Almost every meme you've ever heard of came from the depths of 4chan's /b/ board. LOLcats? Started as "Caturday" (posting of cat pics on Saturdays) on 4chan. Facepalm? 4chan. Rickrolling? Oh, you better believe it came from 4chan.

This may seem like nothing... not a big deal. I'd say it a huge deal. Whether or not you've ever heard of 4chan, ISPs shouldn't be blocking websites because they don't like the content. This is contrary to the concept of Net Neutrality. Access to, or traffic from a website should not be given preference one way or another.

AT&T doesn't really have any good will to burn after the ongoing iPhone shenanigans. So going up against 4chan seems like a terrible idea. Perhaps you remember the recent Scientology protests? All came from 4chan. Under the collective moniker, "anonymous", 4chan users have a history of pranks and hacks designed to punish those they feel need punishment. AT&T may have a real problem on its hands if this is a real policy, and not just a mistake.

Like they say... 4chan: Because none of us is a cruel as all of us.


I'll update this post as things progress.

Update: AT&T has issued a statement:

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.

A Customer was DDoSed? Who? Seems fishy to me that this was coming from the img domain. I choose to believe that AT&T had some other reason for doing this. I imagine after realizing that this would be a PR disaster they reevaluated the block.

4chan says:

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.

So AT&T overreacted and blocked the domain for everyone? Interesting. So the war is off. For now at least.