Egypt Currently In Government-Mandated Internet Blackout
Posted by Joshua_Kopstein on Friday, Jan 28, 2011
UPDATED
Yesterday evening reports trickled in that Egypt had entered a mandatory country-wide internet blackout. This would mean that by order of the Egyptian government, every single internet connection — financial, business or otherwise — had been terminated, marking the first time in history that an entire country has been forced into a state of complete communicative isolation.
(By Friday afternoon, Anonymous reportedly began faxing thousands of copies of newly-released Wikileaks documents that embarrass the Egyptian and American governments into Egypt’s borders. See our story here.)
Late last night, internet monitoring corporation Renesys was able to confirm early reports that the Middle Eastern nation, whose web connections normally service close to 80 million people, had indeed been unplugged.
At 22:34 UTC (00:34am local time), Renesys observed the virtually simultaneous withdrawal of all routes to Egyptian networks in the Internet’s global routing table. Approximately 3,500 individual BGP routes were withdrawn, leaving no valid paths by which the rest of the world could continue to exchange Internet traffic with Egypt’s service providers. Virtually all of Egypt’s Internet addresses are now unreachable, worldwide.
This is a completely different situation from the modest Internet manipulation that took place in Tunisia, where specific routes were blocked, or Iran, where the Internet stayed up in a rate-limited form designed to make Internet connectivity painfully slow. The Egyptian government’s actions tonight have essentially wiped their country from the global map.
Prior to the blackout, the Egyptian government had already blocked Twitter, followed closely by Facebook and Google earlier this week. Renesys says that right now all but one tiny block of connections belonging to Noor Group, who appear to be keeping the Egyptian Stock Exchange up and running, have been completely cut off.
The widespread public unrest that recently engulfed the country is likely the impetus behind this unprecedented and potentially economy-crippling action. Since protests began at least 5 demonstrators have been shot dead by Egyptian police. Protestors have held their ground however, demanding an end to President Hosni Mubarak’s 30-year regime. On top of all that, we can’t help but hold a sneaking suspicion based on the timing of this tweet that our favorite secret-spilling public enemy-guy may also have a larger part to play in the unfolding drama. And it would seem Anonymous has already been rallied to action as well.
Is a government “kill switch” truly the best defense we have against internet age cyber-threats and intelligence leaks? Didn’t we just get done talking about how Obama could do this exact same thing if such an emergency were to arise here in the States? And most importantly, what will happen on the streets of Cairo with 80 million people disconnected from all communications except local phone lines — and how will we even know about it?
UPDATE: Now Syria has been taken offline too. It would seem the Tunisian revolts that inspired the unrest in the Middle East had an even wider influence than many initially suspected.
Get real-time updates here.
Related Stories:
Internet Martial Law: What Obama Might Have To Do In Case Of A Cyberwar
Researchers On The Cyber Apocalypse: Chill Out
Wikileaks & The Broken Game Our Governments Play
via Renesys
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Electronic musician and computer culture journalist. Contact: josh ◢at◣ motherboard ◐dot◑ tv
