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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-dea

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-deadly-protests/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/iran-cutting-internet-amid-dead...

immibis 9mo 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.
- mywittyname 9mo ago
  You assume threats need to be made. One doesn't get to be the head of a business in a country like Iran without being a True Believer.
  - ReptileMan 9mo ago
    I doubt there are many true believers. Most of the top brass are probably driven from sf interest. But loyalty is beyond doubt. At least until the regime is winning
    - BurningFrog 9mo ago
      It's enough to be a True Obeyer.
    - helloaltalt 9mo ago
      Iran is kind of like russia thinking about it. Russia's trying to censor some shit too by having outside ipv4 or something (dont know what its called) blocked and basically made a large intranet But people could still buy vps and make it work somehow So iran and russia are similar in that sense and this kinda puts things more into balance but I am sure that % of true believers/doing for self interest might vary or something
- thesdev 9mo ago
  Yep, everything connecting to the Internet goes through the TIC. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telecommunication_Infrastructure_Company https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telecommunication_Infrastructu...
  - breppp 9mo ago
    Ministry of Information is a name with a certain feel
    - zamadatix 9mo ago
      I probably spent far too much time looking into why they'd set themselves up with that kind of name... but it just nerd sniped me too hard to pass up. Translation tools claim (I don't know enough to verify) a literal translation is "Ministry of Communications and Information Technology". I.e. they handle telecoms & IT, or "communications technology and information technology" if fully expanded. But why bother switching it around to "Ministry of Information and Communications Technology" then? Apparently because that's what the order we call it in English https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_and_communications_technology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_and_communications... which surprised me because I didn't even know that was a term and I've only ever worked in the IT and telecoms jobs - WHTMA (We Have Too Many Acronyms).
- deepriverfish 9mo ago
  they don't need to say the or else part since they control the whole country including the ISP.
RealityVoid 9mo ago
You might then enjoy this story that was on the front page a couple of days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46505352 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46505352
WhereIsTheTruth 9mo 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-facebooks-systems-promoted-violence-against-rohingya-meta-owes-reparations-new-report/ https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2022/09/myanmar-faceb...
- daedrdev 9mo 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 9mo 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
    - FilosofumRex 9mo ago
      [flagged]
    - helloaltalt 9mo ago
      Kashmir has such a bloody history with its kashmiri pandits and wars and even recent events that really shock its nation. Kashmir has been the most unstable part of India and Article 370 although with flaws wanted to give Kashmir the stability it deserves but Kashmir had even its own flags and state etc. and thats why it got really messy and why the internet used to be shut down Kashmir still requires people to specifically get a sim just for Kashmir. But you can get any large carrier to do such. There are even ways of generating e-sim and such, but there is genuinely lots of concerns and complaints in doing so and its very time consuming in a way but internet access has stabilized for the most part, you just require a special sim verification again to do such or perhaps buying a new sim specifically for kashmir but you can port the number as well but as I said, its really time consuming but possible to even do this without entering kashmir itself
averysmallbird 9mo 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 9mo 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/ 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.
  - itintheory 9mo ago

immibis 9mo 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.

mywittyname 9mo ago
You assume threats need to be made. One doesn't get to be the head of a business in a country like Iran without being a True Believer.
- ReptileMan 9mo ago
  I doubt there are many true believers. Most of the top brass are probably driven from sf interest. But loyalty is beyond doubt. At least until the regime is winning
  - BurningFrog 9mo ago
    It's enough to be a True Obeyer.
  - helloaltalt 9mo ago
    Iran is kind of like russia thinking about it. Russia's trying to censor some shit too by having outside ipv4 or something (dont know what its called) blocked and basically made a large intranet But people could still buy vps and make it work somehow So iran and russia are similar in that sense and this kinda puts things more into balance but I am sure that % of true believers/doing for self interest might vary or something
thesdev 9mo ago
Yep, everything connecting to the Internet goes through the TIC. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telecommunication_Infrastructure_Company https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telecommunication_Infrastructu...
- breppp 9mo ago
  Ministry of Information is a name with a certain feel
  - zamadatix 9mo ago
    I probably spent far too much time looking into why they'd set themselves up with that kind of name... but it just nerd sniped me too hard to pass up. Translation tools claim (I don't know enough to verify) a literal translation is "Ministry of Communications and Information Technology". I.e. they handle telecoms & IT, or "communications technology and information technology" if fully expanded. But why bother switching it around to "Ministry of Information and Communications Technology" then? Apparently because that's what the order we call it in English https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_and_communications_technology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_and_communications... which surprised me because I didn't even know that was a term and I've only ever worked in the IT and telecoms jobs - WHTMA (We Have Too Many Acronyms).
deepriverfish 9mo ago
they don't need to say the or else part since they control the whole country including the ISP.

RealityVoid 9mo ago

You might then enjoy this story that was on the front page a couple of days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46505352 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46505352

WhereIsTheTruth 9mo 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-facebooks-systems-promoted-violence-against-rohingya-meta-owes-reparations-new-report/ https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2022/09/myanmar-faceb...

daedrdev 9mo 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 9mo 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
  - FilosofumRex 9mo ago
    [flagged]
  - helloaltalt 9mo ago
    Kashmir has such a bloody history with its kashmiri pandits and wars and even recent events that really shock its nation. Kashmir has been the most unstable part of India and Article 370 although with flaws wanted to give Kashmir the stability it deserves but Kashmir had even its own flags and state etc. and thats why it got really messy and why the internet used to be shut down Kashmir still requires people to specifically get a sim just for Kashmir. But you can get any large carrier to do such. There are even ways of generating e-sim and such, but there is genuinely lots of concerns and complaints in doing so and its very time consuming in a way but internet access has stabilized for the most part, you just require a special sim verification again to do such or perhaps buying a new sim specifically for kashmir but you can port the number as well but as I said, its really time consuming but possible to even do this without entering kashmir itself

averysmallbird 9mo 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 9mo 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/ 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.
- itintheory 9mo ago