Comedian John Oliver, host of HBO's "This Week Tonight," appears onstage during the 67th Primetime Emmy Awards on Sept. 20, 2015. The FCC said Oliver is not to blame for its website crashing Sunday night. It was because of a cyberattack. File Photo by Ken Matsui/UPI | License Photo

May 8 (UPI) -- The Federal Communications Commission said Monday its website crashed late Sunday night because of a cyberattack -- not an overload of comments prompted by comedian John Oliver.

The attack came shortly after Oliver urged viewers of his HBO show Last Week Tonight to support net neutrality rules, which FCC Chairman Ajit Pai wants to roll back.


Oliver directed viewers to gofccyourself.com, which goes to FCC website's page allowing people to comment on net neutrality.

In 2014, the FCC website crashed shortly after Oliver asked his viewers to comment about net neutrality rules, intended to ensure an open Internet.

This time, the FCC said its website went down because of an attack designed to prevent people from commenting on its proposals -- not an influx of comments.

"These actors were not attempting to file comments themselves; rather they made it difficult for legitimate commenters to access and file with the FCC," David Bray, the FCC's chief information officer, said in a statement.

Bray said the comment system remained up and running the entire time but the attack prevented the FCC from responding to people attempting to submit comments.

The site has received tens of thousands of comments since Sunday's "Last Week Tonight" episode aired.

The consumer advocacy group Fight for the Future called on the FCC to release its logs to an independent security analyst to verify what happened.

"The FCC's statement raises a lot of questions," the group's campaign director Evan Greer said in a statement, "and the agency should act immediately to ensure that voices of the public are not being silenced as it considers a move that would affect every single person that uses the Internet."