Yesterday, AT&T blocked 4chan to DSL subscribers and the reasons weren’t completely clear, leading to speculation that censorship might be in play in regards to the infamous online forum. Earlier today, AT&T customers began regaining access, and now we know the details surrounding the telecom’s move to block and then unblock 4Chan.
AT&T has issued the following 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.”