Egypt's 'Net blockage an 'Armageddon approach'

Computerworld - The Internet blockade imposed by the Egyptian government in response to growing civilian unrest is unprecedented, both in its nature and scope, according to network monitoring firms.

Unlike other incidents where governments in Iran, Tunisia and elsewhere tried to control the flow of information by throttling specific Internet services and sites, the Egyptian government seems to have simply pulled the plug on all Internet services nationwide.

As of this morning, just a few dozen networks inside the country, including the Egyptian stock exchange, appeared to be up and running. Usually, between 3,000 and 3,500 are operating on a daily basis, according to Internet monitoring firm Renesys. It is still not entirely clear what these networks are or how they are still up and running given the total shutdown of Internet connectivity.

"This is on a different level entirely," said James Cowie, CTO at Renesys. "There's no cutting off the finger to save the patient here. This really is the Armageddon approach."

Countries such as Iran, Tunisia, Russia, China and Pakistan have offered recent examples of how governments can control information by shutting off access to specific services such as Twitter, YouTube, Facebook and Google.

Most of these surgical approaches, however, have been vulnerable to countermeasures, Cowie said. So, for example, when a government blocked access to Twitter, citizens could still access the service by using a proxy server.

"But when you shut down the Internet, the proxy server becomes useless, because you can't get to it. It's very crude, it's a very blunt instrument, but it is extremely effective," Cowie said. "There's no alternative, unless you can build your own Internet."

The only other nation to have taken a similar approach was Myanmar, also known as Burma, which in 2007 shut off all Internet connectivity in the midst of violent civilian protests.

But the situation in Egypt is vastly different because the country is much bigger, and is dependent on the Internet to a much greater extent than Burma, said Craig Labovitz, chief scientist at Arbor Networks, a network security firm that has been monitoring Internet traffic to and from Egypt.