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Verizon Wireless, Meet 4Chan
4Chan claims they've been blocked, Verizon says no....

(Updated with response from Verizon at bottom.) Last summer you might recall that 4Chan users collectively cried out that they'd been blocked by AT&T, and began firing their trademark digital barbs at the carrier's direction. As it turned out, the website had only been temporarily blocked as AT&T worked to resolve a distributed denial of service attack. Now in a post to their status blog, 4Chan says they've been blocked by Verizon Wireless. "We've received confirmation from Verizon's Network Repair Bureau (NRB) that we are 'explicitly blocked,'" says 4Chan founder Moot in a status update. "After investigating, we found that Verizon is dropping traffic to/from boards.4chan.org, only on port 80 (HTTP)," he says. Despite the proclamations sure to come, an intentional block of any website seems unlikely as the FCC sits crafting network neutrality rules; we've fired off an inquiry to Verizon to see what's causing the problem.

Update: Verizon offered us this statement about the 4Chan block:

quote:
Protecting Our Customers And Our Network

The most important thing we offer? Our network. When our network is attacked, or at risk of attack in a way that could harm our customers' ability to make and receive calls, or use wireless multimedia and data services, we jump to action.

Recently, Verizon Wireless security and external experts detected attacks from an IP address associated with the 4Chan family of web sites that was disruptive to our customers and our network. To protect both, we eliminated connectivity to the IP address. At no time was 4Chan itself blocked. Ongoing network security team monitoring has now determined there is no longer an immediate threat. Connectivity to those sites is being restored later today.

Typically, these attacks involve someone sending hundreds of thousands of messages to wireless devices to round up active customer addresses for follow-up activity including hacker attacks. These "sweeps" can jam our network and deliver unwanted electronic messages that also can drain customer devices’ battery life and slow their operation.

We take being the nation's most reliable wireless network seriously. Seriously enough to protect our customers and our network from malicious attacks, even if we get dinged in the blogosphere. It's easy to complain about "blocking" when your wireless data connection is stable, fast and reliable. But try connecting to the web from your Droid or Blackberry when attacks slow - and potentially block - use of our network all together.

We monitor against attacks and potential attacks to ensure the integrity of the Verizon Wireless network. Our customers expect nothing less.

Most recommended from 93 comments



ArrayList
DevOps
Premium Member
join:2005-03-19
Mullica Hill, NJ

4 recommendations

ArrayList

Premium Member

maybe they are using this

»www.youtube.com/watch?v= ··· embedded