EH-Net

I just ran into this and thought I'd share it with you guys.  Looks like Egypt has gone "dark".  The government has ordered all internet providers and cell carriers to shut down internet service.  http://bgpmon.net/blog/?p=450

Pretty interesting... haven't seen this in a while.

And they're still down. I'm reasonably sure that they've taken the record now for both length and breadth of outage. I also see conflicting accounts on whether the ISP behind their stock exchange is still up. If that's down long, they'll start doing themselves some serious economic harm here shortly.

I pulled up a page yesterday that looked like the english version of their stock exchange. So it looks like it's only dark for some people, but not the ones that funnel money to the government.

*edit to add link

http://www.egyptse.com/English/homepage.aspx

This is back for discussion in the US again to give the president an Internet Kill Siwthc:

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/01/kill-switch-legislation/

Although they say it is only to be used if some catastrophic cyber attack hits us and they need to prevent the spread to critical systems, I just don't trust the goiv't. Call me crazy.

Good thing EFF et al sent an open letter opposing this. Sounds like a great discussion in our new Ethical Hacktivism Board. ;-)

Don

Well, from a certain perspective, I imagine that "some catastrophic cyber attack" might very well include massive protests that were critical of the government, which would certainly have a cyber component. This seems to be the case in Egypt, and I wouldn't discount it happening elsewhere.

I'm quite sure that preventing civil unrest would be plenty of justification for the use of such a tool in the name of public safety.

The whole situation sounds like something out of Daemon or Freedom(tm).

However as I said in the other thread, and in twitter, it might be more important to figure out ways to stay running if things do get shut down.

Dude, I was just thinking the same thing. (something out of a Daemon novel)  It's been going on a while now. Crazy!  At least some of them are keeping connected by landlines, fax machines, ham radios and dialing international numbers vai dial-up modem with their cell phone. Also, Noor Group is still standing strong against shutting down their service.  Good to see Anonymous is helping out: http://blogs.forbes.com/andygreenberg/2011/01/28/amid-digital-blackout-anonymous-mass-faxes-wikileaks-cables-to-egypt/

As far as I am concerned they have gone dark in landline and cell phones too.

P0et

Some of the reports Friday said that they were that they were killing civilian phones (landlines and cell phone).

So, while people were providing dialup, there was no guarantee it would last.

And if the Stock Exchange is up, what about the banks, I'm sure they're up too...

That is really bad.

Cutting communication channels is the first thing you do when you are at war. Is the government at war with his people?

Even through massive attacks, I can't see why you would shut down an entire country. Just shut down the attacked servers!

There is absolutely nothing good in this...

The last ISP in Egypt, the one that was providing access to their stock exchange, has now apparently gone down:

http://yro.slashdot.org/story/11/01/31/2340230/Egypt-Goes-Dark-As-Last-ISP-Pulls-Plug

And it looks like they have mobile phone service back for the time being as well:

http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/218249/mobile_phone_service_restored_in_egypt_for_now.html