[ooni-talk] Report on Iran's internet blackout

[Maria Xynou]

Hello,

In collaboration with CAIDA/IODA and Iranian community members (Kandoo),
we co-published a research report which shares measurement data and
technical observations on Iran's internet blackout.

Our report is available here:
https://ooni.org/post/2019-iran-internet-blackout/

Iran’s nation-wide Internet blackout is confirmed by several data
sources, such as IODA, Google traffic data, and Oracle’s Internet
Intelligence data. These data sources show that the Internet blackout in
Iran started on 16th November 2019 and has been ongoing. As of 21st
November 2019 (and more drastically from 23rd November 2019), Internet
connectivity is being restored in Iran.

IODA data shows that Iranian cellular operators were disconnected first
on 16th November 2019 (followed by almost all other operators over the
next 5 hours), and that ISPs appear to have used diverse mechanisms to
enforce the blackout.

By analyzing packet captures from the MCCI (AS197207) network, we found
that a RST packet is injected at both ends of the connection.

During the blackout, most Iranians were barred from connecting to the
global Internet, but they still had access to Iran’s national intranet:
the domestic network hosting Iranian websites and services.

Yet, OONI measurements (which require Internet connectivity) were
collected from multiple networks in Iran between 16th November 2019 to
23rd November 2019, showing that the internet blackout was not total.

To explore whether and how connectivity to the Internet could be
possible from Iran during the blackout, we performed manual testing
locally.

We found that DNS tunneling could possibly be a low bandwidth solution
to get network traffic to leave Iran.

We also found that it was possible to connect to the Internet by using
virtual private servers (VPS) to setup a local proxy in Iran and use
that proxy to tunnel traffic to another proxy outside Iran.

Please share this report with your networks:
https://twitter.com/OpenObservatory/status/1198321792076701696

Thank you,

~ OONI team.

-- 
Maria Xynou
Research & Partnerships Director
Open Observatory of Network Interference (OONI)
https://ooni.torproject.org/
PGP Key Fingerprint: 2DC8 AFB6 CA11 B552 1081 FBDE 2131 B3BE 70CA 417E


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