Internet access in Syria has suffered a lot ever since the armed retaliation against Bashar Al Asad ensued. A few months ago, internet traffic from the country declined to zero, indicating a country-wide blockage of internet access. The same seems to be happening yet again.
In the past, the Syrian government has denied accusations that it actively tries to monitor internet traffic and block access, when need be. However, it has been alleged when the regime gears up for a major operation, it tends to bring down communications network.
The recent decline in internet traffic from Syria occured at 18:45 GMT on Tuesday. This was reported by a number of security firms. Google substantiated this by stating that all Google services in the country had become unavailable during the blanket block.
While that sheds light on the international traffic emanating from Syria, it is as yet unknown that whether or not the internet services are still functional within the country.
According to Umbrella Security Labs, “OpenDNS resolvers saw a significant drop in traffic from Syria. On closer inspection it seems Syria has largely disappeared from the Internet. Effectively, the shutdown disconnects Syria from Internet communication with the rest of the world”
So far, it is unclear as to what is the reason behind the outage. Many have cited concerns that the Syrian government may have pulled the plug on the internet but that can’t be said for sure yet.
Umbrella Security Labs says as much when it writes, “Although we can’t yet comment on what caused this outage, past incidents were linked to both government-ordered shutdowns and damage to the infrastructure, which included fiber cuts and power outages.”
Source: Umbrella
Courtesy: PC World
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