How Syria Turned Off the Internet

On November 29, 2012, all internet traffic from Syria to the rest of the world stopped for approximately two minutes. This was a complete blackout, unlike previous instances where some requests still trickled out. The Syrian Minister of Information claimed that the government did not shut down the internet but rather it was due to cable being cut by terrorists. However, CloudFlare's investigation suggests this is unlikely as all connectivity to Syria was cut simultaneously. The country has four physical cables connecting it to the rest of the Internet, and for a whole-country outage, all four would have had to be cut at once, which seems improbable. Instead, the systematic withdrawal of routes indicates that this was done through updates in router configurations rather than a physical failure or cable cut. The last sites accessed by Syrians before their internet access was cut off included a photo sharing blog, a Syrian news site, a Muslim-oriented social network, and a porn site. Internet access for Syria appears to have been at least partially restored on December 1, 2012.