Iran inadvertantly wages cyber war — on itself
Posted on | June 18, 2009 | 1 comment
Iran has become the first nation-state to wage cyber war — on itself. At least that’s the notion posited by Computerworld reporter Patrick Thibodeau in this story, and reinforced by Arbor Networks researcher Craig Labovitz in this blog post.
Arbor’s graph below show the effects of the state-owned Data communication Company of Iran, or DCI’s, move on June 13th to cut off all upstream Internet traffic providers. The result: a near complete loss of Web traffic into and out of the ancient nation.
DCI’s intent was to stop protestors from Tweeting and Facebook-messaging dispatches from the scene of riots over Iran’s disputed presidential elections. It sure did, but DCI also shut down all of Iran’s Web traffic.
The clamp down also choked off credit card and ATM systems. And it may have contributed to a major power outage in Tehran, reports Thibodeau.
Within a matter of hours, the intrinisic open-architecture and resiliency of the Internet took hold.
Labovitz
Savvy protestors and supporters outside of Iran began using proxy servers – the technology that enables spammers and privacy advocates to cover their online tracks — to resume Tweeting and Facebook-messaging dispatches from the protest venues.
Iran is not the first nation to unplug the Web as a means to quell political unrest. Burma did it in 2007. But Burma, unlike Iran, has very few ties to global commerce and the open-source Internet community. By contrast, DCI’s blunt blow to Iran’s domestic and international Web connections “represents a delicate balance for the Iranian government and a test case for the Internet to impact democratic change,” opines Labovitz.
–Byron Acohido
Graphic showing cratering of Internet traffic in Iran courtesy of Arbor Networks
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A friend of mine just emailed me one of your articles from a while back. I read that one a few more. Really enjoy your blog. Thanks
Comment by Aaron Wakling — 6/18/2009 @ 2:15 pm