The mass protests in Kazakhstan originally began on January 2 as a response by the population to the sharp rise in fuel prices. And although Kazakh President Kasym-Zhomart Tokayev returned prices to their original value, mass demonstrations continued. The population has long been dissatisfied with growing social inequalities and pervasive corruption, which prázzí independent Kazakhstan since its independence in 1990.
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Protesters expressed dissatisfaction with the president on the streets and on the Internet. They began to spread through the Telegram communication platform photo overthrown statues of former Kazakh President Nazarbayev and the slogan “shal, ket” (roughly “Old man, leave!”).
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The whole country without a connection
And then, on the afternoon of the fifth of January, the telegram groups fell silent. And with them the websites of the government, private companies and social networks. Kazakhstan has simply turned off the internet for its people.
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“Turning off the internet has created an atmosphere of confusion and insecurity, especially among people who are afraid to leave their homes,” she said. Gizmodo Diana Kudaibergen, who lectures on political sociology at Cambridge University. “Kazakhstan is very dependent on digital connectivity. People rely on information on the Internet because they know the state media is one-sided. “
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The Kazakh internet traffic was partially open on Wednesday, January 5 restored – this was in line with President Tokaev’s live televised speech – but after nine o’clock in the evening, state authorities cut back on the Internet.
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Blocking against protests
Locals are a bit accustomed to state-initiated Internet outages. The Republic of Kazakhstan is considered for a state with an authoritarian regime, which according to international observers “Does not respect democratic standards” and has “significantly limited freedom of speech”.
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The Kazakh government has long used blocking access to mobile internet to complicate protesters’ communication and prevent journalists from transmitting information about the demonstrations.
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“The June 2019 presidential election seemed to mark the beginning of the transition to greater freedom of expression: civil society organized unprecedented protests, the quality of online news improved and the government made small concessions to give credibility to its reform discourse,” the international organization said. Reporters Without Borders. “At the same time, however, Kazakhstan is modernizing its repressive methods and, in particular, exercising greater control over the Internet.”
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“The government has long used local blocking of Internet access in places where protests are taking place.” she stated Kazakh journalist Joanna Lillis. “It prevents the protesters from organizing and mobilizing and also prevents journalists from transmitting information from the protests. Sometimes it can be seen that they block access via mobile 3G / 4G networks. ”At other times, she said, they selectively block specific websites, such as the social network Facebook, if, for example, an opposition politician is sending a speech through it. According to her, turning off all internet access throughout the country is also exceptional in Kazakhstan.
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“It’s similar to Internet blockades in Belarus,” he notices Alp Toker, head of NetBlocks, which monitors similar outages. “It’s a similar process where all ISPs coordinate access across the country.”
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How to turn off the internet the whole country?
Thanks to previous preparations, switching off the Internet throughout the country was surprisingly easy for the Kazakh government. First occurred coordinated shutdown of mobile operators’ internet services. This in itself means blocking about three quarters of normal internet traffic, because in Kazakhstan – as in Asia in general – mobile internet access is the main share all connections.
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In a situation where the ruling apparatus has power over the interconnection nodes of the Internet, it is enough to give the order to break the connection of these nodes with foreign ones. And it is connected to the outside world.
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The Internet is not a single computer network, but rather an interconnection of a large number of relatively independent networks. Each network communicates with other networks. If the network declares itself (for example, using BGP, Border Gateway Protocol) that it does not exist or that it is inaccessible, the operation is stopped immediately.
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“The Internet network cannot prevent these interventions, it is similar to unplugging your home router, no one outside the apartment can prevent you from doing so,” Michal Salát, Director of the Threat Intelligence Division at Avast Security, told us.
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Technically, a similar “controlled outage” would be possible anywhere in the world. In practice, however, the government in the Czech Republic would have a problem with ordering such an outage, because Czech operators of Internet nodes (IXP, Internet Exchange Point) have different legal personalities.
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“At the beginning is the end user, then the local ISP, the local IXP, the foreign IXP and at the end the foreign content provider,” explained Miroslav Dvořák, CTO of ESET. “In a situation where the ruling apparatus has power over the IXP, it is enough to give the order to break the connection of the local IXP with the foreign ones and it is after the connection with the surrounding world.”
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According to Dvořák, even such a thorough blocking can be bypassed, but it is not easy: “For example, I can think of a Starlink-type satellite internet connection. It would have to be a type of connection where the end device bypasses the communication of the local internet provider and the local IPX. “
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In the Czech Republic, according to Dvořák, it would be very difficult to order such a failure: “In the Czech Republic, we have several IXPs with different forms of legal personality.”
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Internet blocking is ambiguous
Internet outages occur from time to time around the world. Sometimes it’s a mistake, like recent eight-hour outage in the Gambia. Other times, for example, the interruption of a key cable, like when a Georgian pensioner saw a saw in 2011 cut cable connecting Armenia to the Internet.
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More and more often, however, these outages are targeted. In Algeria, for example, regularly switch off internet throughout the country during the school leaving examinations. In African Gabon they turned off the internet during the protests and again in Uganda due to the ongoing elections.
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Ahead of tomorrow’s election the Internet has been shutdown in Uganda (confirmed by a few friends in Kampala).
Letter from communications commission below: pic.twitter.com/tRpTIXTPcW— Samira Sawlani (@samirasawlani) January 13, 2021
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The Internet outage in Kazakhstan has received international acclaim not only because it has prevented locals from communicating and organizing protests effectively. It also had a major impact on the extraction of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.
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After China outlawed mining, a number of so-called mining mines moved just north to neighboring Kazakhstan, which thus became a cryptocurrency. After the USA, it has the most crypto-miners in the world. The fall in the computing capacity of the bitcoin network after the blockage by 12% showed the importance of the Kazakh “iron” for the global network.
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Internet has been down in Kazahstan for a few hours where roughly 18% if Bitcoin’s hashrate is.
Looks like the impact on the hashrate is so far 12% drop just in the last few hours since internet went down. pic.twitter.com/FcTDsJ6R77
— Larry Cermak (@lawmaster) January 5, 2022
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However, Internet restrictions also have implications for the current economy. Banks, state and private institutions depend on Internet traffic. Therefore, no outage of the Internet can be prolonged without the state making a lot of money on it. This is one of the reasons why Kazakhstan is likely to make more selective Internet connection restrictions, either on the basis of location or on the basis of a communication platform.
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