Internet outage

An Internet outage or Internet blackout can occur due to censorship, cyberattacks, disasters[1], police or security services actions[2] or errors.

Disruptions of submarine communications cables may cause blackouts or slowdowns to large areas. Countries with a less developed Internet infrastructure are more vulnerable due to small numbers of high-capacity links.

A line of research finds that the Internet with it having a "hub-like" core structure that makes it robust to random losses of nodes but also fragile to targeted attacks on key components − the highly connected nodes or "hubs".[3]

List
This list is incomplete; you can help by expanding it.
See also: List of web host service outages and Internet censorship § Internet shutdowns
YearNameCountry or regionAffected usersNumber of affected users (rough)DescriptionDuration (rough)Internet componentCauseEntity responsibleType
20082008 submarine cable disruptionMiddle East and Mediterranean SeaThree separate incidents of major damage to submarine optical communication cables around the world occurred in 2008. The first incident caused damage involving up to five high-speed Internet submarine communications cables in the Mediterranean Sea and Middle East from 23 January to 4 February 2008, causing internet disruptions and slowdowns for users in the Middle East and India.[4] In late February there was another outage, this time affecting a fiber optic connection between Singapore and Jakarta.[5] On 19 December, FLAG FEA, GO-1, SEA-ME-WE 3, and SEA-ME-WE 4 were all cut.[6][7][8]submarine cablesUnknownUnknown
20112011 submarine cable disruptionSouth Asia and Middle EastIn two incidents of submarine communications cables cut off on 25 December 2011. The first cut off occurred to SEA-ME-WE 3 at Suez canal, Egypt and the second cut off occurred to i2i which took place between Chennai, India and Singapore line. Both the incidents had caused the Internet disruptions and slowdowns for users in the South Asia and Middle East in particular UAE.[9][10][11][12]submarine cablesUnknownUnknown
2011 Armenia3,000,000A woman digging for scrap metal damaged land cables and thereby severed most connectivity for the nation of Armenia.[13]5 hoursland cablesdiggingFull
2011 EgyptThe Internet in Egypt was shut down by the government, whereby approximately 93%[14] of networks were without access in 2011 in an attempt to stop mobilization for anti-government protests.[15]ISPsgovernment censorship EgyptFull
2012 2012 Syrian internet outage  Syria On 29 November 2012 the Syrian Internet was cut off from the rest of the world. The autonomous system (AS29386) of Syrian Telecommunication Establishment (STE) was cut off completely at 10:26 UTC. Five prefixes were reported to have remained up, this is why Dyn[16] reports an outage of 92% of the country.

Responsibility for the outage has somewhat speculatively been blamed on various organizations.[17][18]

 Unknown Unknown
2016 GermanyDeutsche Telekom900,000At the end of November 2016 0.9 million routers, from Deutsche Telekom and produced by Arcadyan, were crashed due to failed TR-064 exploitation attempts by a variant of Mirai, which resulted in Internet connectivity problems for the users of these devices.[19][20] While TalkTalk later patched their routers, a new variant of Mirai was discovered in TalkTalk routers.[21][22][23]1 dayInternet routerscyberattackUnknownFull
2016 LiberiaUnknownMirai has also been used in an attack on Liberia's Internet infrastructure in November 2016.[24][25][26]cyberattackUnknownFull
20162016 Dyn cyberattack United StatesDyn (company)The cyberattack took place on October 21, 2016, and involved multiple distributed denial-of-service attacks (DDoS attacks) targeting systems operated by Domain Name System (DNS) provider Dyn, which caused major Internet platforms and services to be unavailable to large swathes of users in Europe and North America.[27][28] As a DNS provider, Dyn provides to end-users the service of mapping an Internet domain name—when, for instance, entered into a web browser—to its corresponding IP address. The distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack was accomplished through a large number of DNS lookup requests from tens of millions of IP addresses.[29] The activities are believed to have been executed through a botnet consisting of a large number of Internet-connected devices—such as printers, IP cameras, residential gateways and baby monitors—that had been infected with the Mirai malware. With an estimated throughput of 1.2 terabits per second, the attack is, according to experts, the largest DDoS attack on record.[30]1 dayDomain Name System (DNS) providercyberattackUnknownMajor websites
2017 CameroonSouth-West and North-West of Cameroon20% of the country's populationOn January 17, around 20 percent of the people in Cameroon had their Internet blocked due to recent anti-government protests.[31][32][33]270 days or 8 monthsgovernment censorship CameroonFull
2017 North KoreaOn October 1, The autonomous system (AS131279) of Star JV was cut off completely, due to alleged US cyber attack[34][35][36]9 hours and 31 minutescyberattack United StatesFull
2019Verizon and BGP Optimizer United StatesVerizon (company)On June 24, 2019, many parts of the Internet faced an unprecedented outage as Verizon, the popular Internet transit provider accidentally rerouted IP packages after it wrongly accepted a network misconfiguration from a small ISP in Pennsylvania, USA.[37] According to The Register, systems around the planet were automatically updated, and connections destined for Facebook, Cloudflare, and others, ended up going through DQE and Allegheny, which buckled under the strain, causing traffic to disappear into a black hole.[38]3 hoursInternet transit providermisconfigurationUnknownMajor websites
2019Iranian internet shutdown  IranThe Internet in Iran was shut down by the government, whereby approximately 96% of networks were without access in an attempt to stop mobilization for anti-government protests.7 daysISPsgovernment censorship IranFull
2019Internet shutdown in India  India50,000,000 The Government of India passed the Citizenship Amendment Act, 2019 which caused huge controversy and mass protest in various parts of India. In order to prevent protests and outrage on social media, various state governments including those of Assam, Tripura, Meghalaya, Arunachal Pradesh, West Bengal, Uttar Pradesh decided to shut down internet access. Up to 9 days government censorship Various State governments of IndiaFull
20192019 Burmese internet shutdown  MyanmarOn June 21, the Internet in Burma was shut down by the government. The Burmese government shut down the internet connection in nine townships of the northern Arakan State and one single township in the Southern Chin State, which was proposed by Burmese Military officers. The shutdown is ongoing, and has become the world's longest internet shutdown.Government censorship BurmaFull
20192019 Papua protests  IndonesiaTo curb the escalating protests occurred in the Indonesian provinces of Papua and West Papua, Indonesian authority imposed an internet blackout on both provinces on 21 August 2019. The blackout continues until the authority partially lift the blackout in 4 September on several regions, with complete lifting of the restriction only occurred in 9 September.[39]19 daysGovernment censorship IndonesiaFull
YearNameCountry or regionAffected usersNumber of affected users (rough)DescriptionDuration (rough)Internet componentCauseEntity responsibleType

Prevention

Internet outages can be prevented by a more resilient, decentralized Internet architecture.[40]

Management

Modern society, especially in developed countries, depends heavily on the Internet not just for communication. There have been some measures taken and possibilities exist for managing and countering a large-scale Internet outage.

Temporary alternative forms of communication
See also: Emergency communication system and Radio

Meshnets
Main article: Meshnet

See also

References
  1. Petersen, Hauke; Baccelli, Emmanuel; Wählisch, Matthias; Schmidt, Thomas C.; Schiller, Jochen (27 October 2014). "The Role of the Internet of Things in Network Resilience". Internet of Things. IoT Infrastructures. Lecture Notes of the Institute for Computer Sciences, Social Informatics and Telecommunications Engineering. Springer, Cham. 151: 283–296. arXiv:1406.6614. Bibcode:2014arXiv1406.6614P. doi:10.1007/978-3-319-19743-2_39. ISBN 978-3-319-19742-5.
  2. Ellis-Petersen, Hannah; correspondent, a local (2020-01-05). "'Many lives have been lost': five-month internet blackout plunges Kashmir into crisis". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 2020-01-24.
  3. Doyle, John C.; Alderson, David L.; Li, Lun; Low, Steven; Roughan, Matthew; Shalunov, Stanislav; Tanaka, Reiko; Willinger, Walter (11 October 2005). "The "robust yet fragile" nature of the Internet". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. 102 (41): 14497–14502. Bibcode:2005PNAS..10214497D. CiteSeerX 10.1.1.218.6287. doi:10.1073/pnas.0501426102. ISSN 0027-8424. PMC 1240072. PMID 16204384.
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  19. Krebs, Brian (30 November 2016). "New Mirai Worm Knocks 900K Germans Offline". krebsonsecurity.com. Archived from the original on 20 December 2016. Retrieved 14 December 2016.
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