Internet connectivity collapsed across Iran on Thursday amid nationwide protests, according to a web monitoring company.
“I think we are almost completely cut off from the outside world right now,” Amir Rashidi, an Iranian cybersecurity researcher at the nonprofit Mian Group, told TechCrunch.
Doug Madry, director of internet analytics at Kentik, a company that monitors internet traffic around the world, agreed, telling TechCrunch that Iran's internet has been in a “nearly complete blackout” since around 11:30 a.m. Thursday on the U.S. East Coast, or 8 p.m. local time in Tehran.
A graph showing how internet traffic dropped in Iran around 11:30 a.m. ET on Thursday (Image: Kentik)
NetBlocks, which monitors internet traffic, internet infrastructure company Cloudflare, and internet connection tracking site IODA all simultaneously recorded sudden drops in connectivity across Iran.
“We're still seeing a small amount of traffic, but the country is effectively completely offline,” David Belson, head of data insights at Cloudflare, told TechCrunch.
Protests erupted in several Iranian cities at the end of December as the value of Iran's currency plummeted, causing shortages and sharply rising prices. According to the New York Times, some stores in Tehran's traditional bazaar have been closed for 11 days.
The Iranian government responded with a violent crackdown on protesters.
Rashidi said the Iranian government, which tightly controls internet access in the country, was behind the internet blackout.
Representatives of the Iranian government in the United States did not immediately respond to TechCrunch's request for comment. Iran's Ministry of Foreign Affairs website was down at the time of publication.