Internet Outage Hits Iran Amid Cyberattacks

Iran registered disruption in internet services after citizens complained about the outage, cyberspace watchdog NetBlocks confirmed on Monday.

NetBlocks, which monitors cybersecurity and the governance of the internet, said: “A significant internet outage has been registered in Iran affecting cellular and fixed-line services including Irancell and the TIC gateway; real-time network data show national connectivity at 79% of ordinary levels; incident ongoing.”

https://twitter.com/netblocks/status/1554042916204691457

Researcher Nariman Gharib claimed that the shutdown of intranet-based services like banks and International Risk Governance Council (IRGC) sites is attributed to cyberattacks.

Meanwhile, Tehran's Telecommunication Company stated that the widespread disruption was caused by a fire in one of the infrastructure facilities.

A few days ago, the ministry of information and communications technology blamed power fluctuations and out-of-date infrastructure at the country’s Electricity Distribution Company for the issue, a claim that the power company denied.

Iran has been heavily censoring access to the Internet for the past 20 years to restrict citizens’ access to information. Many foreign and Iranian websites, including news media websites, are already blocked in Iran although controls are readily sidestepped by virtual private networks (VPNs) and anti-filtering software.