On December 1st at approximately 14:30 GMT <x-apple-data-detectors://1>, SecDev's Syria Operations Group monitoring the Syrian Internet witnessed a substantial amount of Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) route update announcements related to Syrian Internet Protocol (IP) blocks. The announcements were the precursor to most of the country going back online.
BGP routes allow for communication traffic to move from one destination to another. Previously, on Nov. 29th, SecDev had reported that thousands of BGP routes had been withdrawn, effectively disabling Syria’s government-controlled Internet. Reports on social media confirm that users are once again able to use TOR and VPN services. Meanwhile, Psiphon confirmed that by 15:00<x-apple-data-detectors://3>, 783 users had connected to the Internet, predominantly using its sophisticated Obfuscated Secure Shell cryptographic protocol (OSSH+). Syria’s Minister of Telecommunications, Imad Sabouni, told Al-Ikhbaria news that the Internet returned to the country after technical crews completed repairs. Previously, in contradictory statements, the Syrian Minister of Information had said on Nov. 29 that "terrorists targeted an internet cable which resulted in an outage" (Elnashra:http://bit.ly/Vbn9d4); however, the Minister of Telecommunications had blamed the outage on a technical error that crews were working hard to repair (Source coming). While most of the country has been reconnected, social media reports claim that in the Deir Ezzour governorate, the Internet remains down and mobile phones are still unavailable in most areas (Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=528327&l=ebe35e1aae&id=192472590885921 ). Sent by SecDev secure mobile. Please excuse typos or other oddities.
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