Analysis of Country-Wide Internet Outages Caused by Censorship
Abstract
In the first months of 2011, Internet communications were disrupted in several North African countries in response to civilian protests and threats of civil war. In this paper, we analyze episodes of these disruptions in two countries: Egypt and Libya. Our analysis relies on multiple sources of large-scale data already available to academic researchers: BGP interdomain routing control plane data, unsolicited data plane traffic to unassigned address space, active macroscopic traceroute measurements, RIR delegation files, and MaxMind's geolocation database. We used the latter two data sets to determine which IP address ranges were allocated to entities within each country, and then mapped these IP addresses of interest to BGP-announced address ranges (prefixes) and origin autonomous systems (ASs) using publicly available BGP data repositories in the US and Europe. We then analyzed observable activity related to these sets of prefixes and ASs throughout the censorship episodes. Using both control plane and data plane data sets in combination allowed us to narrow down which forms of Internet access disruption were implemented in a given region over time. Among other insights, we detected what we believe were Libya's attempts to test firewall-based blocking before they executed more aggressive BGP-based disconnection. Our methodology could be used, and automated, to detect outages or similar macroscopically disruptive events in other geographic or topological regions.
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Tanzania's 2015 Cybercrime Act empowers police to demand disclosure of personal information from ISPs and online content providers and has been used multiple times to charge journalists and regular online users for spreading fake news on Facebook and Twitter.
“While addressing issues such as computer-related fraud, cyberbullying, and child pornography, 106 it also empowers police to demand disclosure of personal information from ISPs and online content providers.And it has been used multiple times to charge journalists and regular online users for spreading fake news on Facebook and Twitter.107”
From Legalizing control: the rise of restrictive internet regulation in sub-Saharan Africa (2026) · cites this paper as [106]
In most autocratic regimes, governmental interference in digital infrastructure and communication is commonplace.
“In most autocratic regimes, governmental interference in digital infrastructure and communication is commonplace.”
From How Dictators Control the Internet: A Review Essay (2020) · cites this paper as Dainotti et al., 2014
In the case of political events potentially threatening to a regime, 'just-in-time' shutdowns allow governments to temporarily disconnect parts of or the whole population.
“This means that in the case of political events that are potentially threatening to a regime, 'just-in-time' shutdowns allow governments to temporarily disconnect parts of or the whole population (Dainotti etal., 2014; Deibert etal., 2010; Freyburg & Garbe, 2018; Gohdes, 2015).”
From How Dictators Control the Internet: A Review Essay (2020) · cites this paper as Dainotti et al., 2014
The literature on the political consequences of FDI for authoritarian survival emphasizes the stabilizing effects of FDI on regimes by enabling the development of costly infrastructure, stimulating economic growth and thereby increasing the output legitimacy of the regime.
“The literature on the political consequences of FDI for authoritarian survival emphasizes the stabilizing effects of FDI on regimes by enabling the development of costly infrastructure, stimulating economic growth and thereby increasing the output legitimacy of the regime. 22”
From Authoritarian collaboration and repression in the digital age: balancing foreign direct investment and control in internet infrastructure (2026) · cites this paper as [22]
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- Authors
- Dainotti, A., Squarcella, C., Aben, E., Claffy, K. C., Chiesa, M., Russo, M., & Pescape, A.
- Affiliations
- University of California San Diego (US)
- Roma Tre University (IT)
- University of Naples Federico II (IT)
- Venue
- IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking
- Published
- 2014-12
- Volume
- 22
- Issue
- 6
- Pages
- 1964-1977
- ISSN
- 1063-6692 (ISSN-L)
- 1558-2566
- OpenAlex
- W1965761857
- Cited by
- 42
- References
- 35
- Citations by year
- 2026: 1 · 2025: 4 · 2024: 4 · 2023: 4 · 2022: 4 · 2021: 4 · 2020: 4 · 2019: 5 · 2018: 2 · 2017: 3 · 2016: 4 · 2015: 2 · 2014: 1
- FWCI
- 3.83
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking (publishedVersion)
- Digital Access to Libraries (submittedVersion)
- Funders
- NSF CRI (CNS-1059439)
- DHS S&T (NBCHC070133, N66001-08-C-2029)
- UCSD
- NSF (CNS-0958547, CNS-1228994)
- RIPE NCC
- MIUR of Italy (AlgoDEEP prot. 2008TFBWL4)
- PLATINO (PON01_01007)
- MIUR
- Google Faculty Award
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Computer Networks and Communications › Network Traffic and Congestion Control
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Artificial Intelligence › Internet Traffic Analysis and Secure E-voting
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Computer Networks and Communications › Network Security and Intrusion Detection
- Keywords
- internet censorship, internet outages, BGP hijacking, Egypt, Libya, Arab Spring protests, autonomous systems, North Africa
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