Whatever you think of Iran's politics, it's hard to deny that the country has frequently been the target of internet-based attacks that sometimes go beyond the originator's plans. If you believe High Council of Cyberspace secretary Mehdi Akhavan Behabadi, the pressure is only getting worse. He tells Iranian media that the nation is under "constant" digital bombardment and was just hit with a major assault on Tuesday that bogged down local internet access. Behabadi unsurprisingly contends that the attacks are deliberate efforts to undermine Iran's data, nuclear and oil infrastructures, with a finger implicitly pointed westward. While it's no secret that the country's enemies want to slow down what they see as a rush towards nuclear weapons, it's difficult to know how much of the accusation is serious versus bluster: we've seen individual smartphone users who consume more than the "several gigabytes" of traffic that reportedly caused national chaos in the most recent incident. No matter the exact nature, it's likely that residents stand to lose as Iran fences off the internet to keep outside influences, hostile and otherwise, from getting in.
[Image credit: Amir1140, Wikipedia]
Filed under: Networking, Internet
Iran claims to have been hit by 'heavy' cyber attack, pins slowdowns on coordinated hacking campaign originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 04 Oct 2012 01:41:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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President Obama may be quite cozy with tech -- what with his predilection for the iPad and those town hall meetings on Facebook -- but he's well aware of its dark side, too. Today he announced that the US will freeze assets and cancel the American visas of Iranian and Syrian agencies tracking dissidents and pro-democracy groups via satellite, computer and phone networks. Among the entities getting the blacklist treatment are the Syrian cellphone company Syriatel, the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence and Security, Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and Iranian internet provider Datak Telecom. Amid election-year pressure to confront Iran, Obama addressed the ongoing threat of the country acquiring nukes, but also paid lip service to social media's role in democracy. "These technologies should be in place to empower citizens, not to repress them," he told an audience of 250 people, according to Reuters. Still, given the limited impact of previous sanctions against Iran, it remains to be seen just how much of an effect Washington's actions have on the human rights situation in either country.
Obama cracks down on Iran and Syria's surveillance of dissidents originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 23 Apr 2012 19:39:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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