Comment by TechSquidTV

3 days ago

Government enacted shut down due to protests. I'd like to hear more about how they actually do this. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/iran-cutting-internet-amid-dead...

41 comments

TechSquidTV

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averysmallbird  3 days ago

There's no single mechanism. Iran's internet is diverse at the edge, and bottlenecked at the international gateway.

Censorship, throttling, and (presumably) surveillance occurs at both layers. In some cases, also the region matters (Sistan and Baluchistan for example have experienced extended blackouts). In part that heterogeneity is because they still ideally want to keep businesses or VIPs online to mitigate the economic loss or logistical issues.

Consequently, the actual means of blocking tends to be on an ISP basis: some will simply drop packets, some will have left certain endpoints open, some will leave international DNS open, etc etc. All that changes when activists notice, exploit the opening, and then the ISP finds out. And then sometimes the TIC (the gateway) will impose blanket limitations or throttling.

My impression is that Iranian intelligence cares less about means than effectiveness, and ISP operators want to keep their license, livelihoods and lives, so they figure out how to meet the mandate. Given that this is something like the fourth blackout in recent years, they've gotten enough practice that there's few options out (that aren't Starlink).

  • helloaltalt  3 days ago

    > Consequently, the actual means of blocking tends to be on an ISP basis: some will simply drop packets, some will have left certain endpoints open, some will leave international DNS open, etc etc. All that changes when activists notice, exploit the opening, and then the ISP finds out. And then sometimes the TIC (the gateway) will impose blanket limitations or throttling.

    Your international dns is interesting post, can dns over https still work like cloudflare's 1.1.1.1 (I don't think cf would work but still) or any other service?

    Is there any iranian person in here hackernews who can test if international dns query works?

    There are ways to send some very important data (although small so a little limited but I think in current time if it can help 1% it helps) that I saw that we can program dns to send each other arbitrary data as well

    In fact there is a tool which can in fact run dns queries and create a sort of finger like protocol on it called dns.toys https://www.dns.toys/

    Which can basically have some cli application like experience on top of dns and there msut be dns tools for communications as well.

WhereIsTheTruth  3 days ago

> Government enacted shut down due to protests

Not just protests, it's to prevent foreign interference (like CIA) from fueling civil unrest and spreading AI deepfakes, as seen in Myanmar and Brazil

https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2022/09/myanmar-faceb...

  • daedrdev  3 days ago

    Wow its so nice this excuse just happens to shut down the internet when an astronomically unpopular regime faces vast protests after years of economic and political mismanagement

    • aprilthird2021  3 days ago

      Internet shut downs are really common in authoritarian countries. India used to shut the Internet down in Kashmir every other day, and in random states for random reasons some as seemingly trivial as high school students taking their board exams

      2 replies →

    • ithkuil  3 days ago

      Apparently a lot of people in the west too are assuming that these protests are fueled by the west. At least that's the most likely explanation for why so many left leaning youth are not supporting Iranians while supporting Palestine. Apparently the fight is not about freedom but about (perceived) whiteness vs non-whiteness

      12 replies →

  • perching_aix  3 days ago

    I gave this a skim and a keyword search. Note that I'm not familiar with the matter.

    The article claims that the Rohingya genocide in Myanmar that kicked off in 2017 has been substantively fueled by Facebook propaganda efforts, with strong links to Myanmar's own "security forces" (military).

    > it's to prevent foreign interference (like CIA) from fueling civil unrest and spreading AI deepfakes, as seen in Myanmar and Brazil

    In contrast then, you seem to allege that it was actually a foreign interference campaign by the CIA? Or am I misunderstanding what you're proposing?

    Because if I'm not, I fail to see how what you linked supports that at all. Even your mention of deepfakes seems very questionable, as those haven't been a thing until late 2017, by which point this cleansing effort was already long underway. I further see that the US has formally condemned these events, although of course that does not rule out involvement.

    • WhereIsTheTruth  3 days ago

      CIA and Amnesty's claims aside, focus on how social media fuels civil unrest, the real concern is foreign interference, Iran has been a target for a very long time

      The US wants a regime change, that's a fact, Trump has been very vocal on the matter, and the NSA has the tools to do what ever it pleases on the internet (e.g., PRISM)

      5 replies →

  • bawolff  3 days ago

    Pretty sure the CIA is perfectly capable of doing that without the internet.

    If anything its easier to spread rumours without the internet to let people compare notes

immibis  3 days ago

Most likely they just go to the head of the ISP (I bet there's only one) and say turn the internet off or else.