Seven months after the order by Ibrahim Raisi, the President of Iran, to the Ministry of Communications to investigate the cause of internet slowness and disruptions and to resolve them, no response has been given to this directive. Instead, he reiterated this order during the opening session of a communications project on December 22, 2023, in Golestan Province, which has faced daily internet disruptions from December 1 to that day.
On December 18, 2023, coinciding with the hacking of Iran’s fuel system by the hacker group ‘Bird Sparrow,’ internet disruptions occurred throughout Iran on AS44375, owned by the Asman-Faraz Sepahan Company. As reported by the Iran Newspaper, following the hack, fueling was conducted manually and in a mode disconnected from the system. This suggests that the Iranian fuel system may have been serviced by the aforementioned AS.
The internet blackout in Sistan and Baluchestan, known since October 1, 2021, as the ‘Bloody Friday’ incident, and recurring every Friday, was last observed in IODA charts in November 2023 but did not occur between December 1 and December 31, 2023.
However, according to reports by the Baluch Activists Campaign, severe internet disruptions occurred in the cities of Chabahar and Iranshahr on December 4, 2023. IODA data from December 18, 2023, the day of the hacker attack on the fuel system, and January 9, 2024, the anniversary of the government demonstrations of December 30, 2009, experienced severe disruptions.
According to IODA data, in Alborz Province, internet disruptions occurred every midnight for approximately two hours from December 1 to December 31. This disruption, either network routing or active probing, has been observable in IODA charts since October 2023.
Internet access in Qazvin Province has also been disrupted daily with active probing or network routing issues since October 2023, continuing consistently until December 31.
Fixed internet services for Telecommunication Company subscribers across Iran were disrupted from the afternoon of December 26, 2023, due to what Mohammadreza Bidkham, the public relations manager of the Telecommunications Company, described as “a technical problem in one of the telecommunications centers” located in District 2 of Tehran.
Filterban has heard from some sources within Iran that the claim of hacking the Ministry of Interior’s systems was related to this disruption. Filterban cannot independently confirm or deny this claim.
Other Notable Disruptions:
- Ilam Province, one of Iran’s minority-inhabited and border provinces, like the past two months, faced severe internet disruptions from December 1 to December 31, 2023.
- Internet in Fars Province experienced severe disruptions from December 19, 2023, to December 31, 2023.
- Internet in Yazd Province also went through severe disruptions between December 1 and December 31, 2023.
