Black-Out Leads to Hack-Back

(Robin Weiner/AP)

It has not been a good month for municipal riders of the “Bay Area Rapid Transit” or BART system in San Francisco, California.

On July 3, at the Civic Center station, a BART police official shot dead a man who appeared “wobbly” and possibly a danger to others.  Locals immediately decried the shooting as massive overreaction; BART officials would say only that an investigation is underway.

This being San Francisco, it didn’t take long for anger to turn into street protests…and, as is the style these days from Cairo to Homs to London, much of that organizing was occurring online via the Internet and social networks like Twitter and Facebook.

The activist’s plan had been for a massive protest to flood all the BART stations and other Municipal Transportation Agency (or MUNI) properties, such as buses and trams on Thursday, July 11.  Activists would coordinate actions via instant messaging, even sharing pictures and counts of the police force in presence on various MUNI buses, rail cars and trolleys for protest purposes.

But then…someone pulled the plug.   Literally. Read the rest of this entry »

Why Nations Block The Web, And What May Follow

UPDATE: 1500 hours UTC Friday: Earlier we posted about the near flat-lining of Internet traffic within Syria, wondering whether Damascus was adopting a tactic tried earlier this year by Egypt.  As detailed earlier this year, Egyptian authorities squeezed the Border Gateway Protocols – the road maps of the Internet into Egypt, if you will – essentially erasing Egypt from the web.  (One Egyptian ISP, Noor, was not affected, mostly like as the government’s last life-life to the Internet.)  It was a neat disappearing trick that, for several days, made nearly every Egyptian web address invisible to the rest of the world.

One of the key early indicators was the complete elimination of any data traffic coming out of Egypt. While data traffic has slowed to a near trickle in Syria, there still is some small amount of traffic, suggesting the BGPs are still in place.  More forensic data analysis will be forth-coming, but it’s possible at this point that Syria isn’t copying Egypt, but rather Libya.

Recall that in early March, as detailed by the Internet analysis firm Renesis, Internet traffic into and out of Libya came to a near halt.  This was likely in response to a “Day of Rage” protest that organizers had been planning there, similar to what was planned in Syria for Friday.  But as James Cowie makes clear, a near-halt isn’t a complete halt, and had Syria erased it’s BGP pathways, like Egypt, all web traffic would have been impossible.  Although it’s still early, there are signs now that the Syrian Internet, while crippled, is still alive. Read the rest of this entry »

The Internet Fights Back Against a Blackout, and Wins

Early reports Wednesday morning are that Egyptian ISPs have reversed course and are once again making Egypt visible to the Internet.

Real-time graph showing the Egyptian ISPs reconnecting through Border Gateway Protocol to the Internet. (Courtesy: the Renesys Corporation)

The Renesys Corporation, which was the first to note and track Egypt’s erasing of the BGP maps into and out of the nation, is now confirming an about-face.

Co-founder James Cowie, writing on Renesys blog, notes:

“Egyptian Internet providers returned to the Internet at 09:29:31 UTC (11:29am Cairo time). Websites such as the Egyptian Stock Exchange, Commercial International Bank of Egypt, MCDR, and the US Embassy in Cairo, are once again reachable.  All major Egyptian ISPs appear to have readvertised routes to their domestic customer networks in the global routing table.”

Earlier this week we discussed just how Egyptian authorities managed to pull the entire nation off-line, using the much-discussed but never-before-attempted trick of erasing the “map” of Egyptian computer nodes and addresses from the Border Gateway Protocol, or BGP, lists.

Speaking with VOA on Tuesday, Cowie referred to this tactic as “…a weapon never used before on this scale.”  He said it was his hope the lesson other nations draw from this is that “…it’s better to stay connected to the Internet” rather than risk social and economic turmoil.

We’ll have much more on this developing story soon.  In the meantime, Renesys prepared this animation, illustrating the minute-by-minute departure of Egypt’s service providers from the global routing table on Friday.