The popular website 4chan.org had been under DDOS attack for the past week. Initially most of the 4chan members and internet “public” had decided that AT&T must have been censoring 4chan, known for it’s controversial content and strong advocacy for net neutrality and against internet censorhip. The truth was that AT&T was doing nothing of the sort.

AT&T released this statement on the issue:

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.

This is obviously quite embarrassing for those who claimed it was censorship, though 4chan immediately came out with a reply claiming that while AT&T was not involved in a “sinister act of censorship, but rather a bit of a mistake and a poorly executed, disproportionate response on AT&T’s part”. It looks as though 4chan still sees the whole event as an opportunity to attack AT&T who is still suffering from the fallout in allowing government agents to monitor internet traffic during the Bush years.