Turns Out Egypt Did Have An Internet Kill Switch

from the flip-the-switch dept

Thu, Feb 10th 2011 4:04pm — Mike Masnick

After Egypt shut off internet access a few weeks back, most of the analysis of how it was done suggested in basically involved calling all of the country's ISPs and ordering them to shut down access. Yet, a new report claims it really was more of a "kill switch" scenario, in that the majority of the shut-off came from flipping a single switch in the Ramses exchange -- a key data center in Cairo. That didn't stop everything, so the rest was accomplished with a few phone calls -- but it was that switch flip that did most of the work.

The same report notes, as we predicted, that the economic impact of the shutdown were pretty big:

The presentation suggests the weeklong shutdown had severe effects on Egypt�s economy, in the short term from loss of commerce, and in the long term from a likely plummet in tourism, and an exodus of call centers from Egypt.

The presentation concludes that the ministry�s course of action in obeying the orders may have some positive effects in the future: �Itʼs unlikely that Egyptʼs communications ministry will ever be asked to ﬂip that switch again.�

Well, hopefully it also makes other countries aware of the negative impacts of killing off internet access.

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Filed Under: egypt, internet, kill switch

18 Comments

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Jay (profile), 10 Feb 2011 @ 4:17pm

Question...
Does this mean that if AT&T is threatened they won't have a switch given to the president to shut off the internet?

How it's set up, it's unlikely that our government will actually stop the money train that is AT&T from getting what it wants, regardless of the consequences.

So it's more than likely that should this actually become part of our legislation, we'll continue to see monopolistic competition in the US.
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a (profile), 10 Feb 2011 @ 4:29pm

Wouldn't surprise me one bit that we already have the switch in place, just not the legislation to justify actually flipping it without public outrage.
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Parag, 10 Feb 2011 @ 5:27pm

Economic damage irrelevant
To the dictators like Mubarak, short and long term economic damage is pretty much irrelevant when they are fighting for survival.
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abc gum, 10 Feb 2011 @ 5:28pm

In addition to the negative affects, there was no benefit. Not sure what they thought would be accomplished, but it appears to be a big failure.
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abc gum, 10 Feb 2011 @ 5:30pm

Re: Economic damage irrelevant
I doubt survival is much of a challenge when you have $70B
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Shane C (profile), 10 Feb 2011 @ 5:33pm

That doesn't quite make sense
This hypothesis doesn't quite make sense when you look at the traffic during that period of time;

http://stat.ripe.net/egypt/

The graph didn't just bottom out, it declined in steps. At one point it even steps up a little bit as (presumably) traffic is rerouted from one "failing" connection, to another.

I'm not saying the "One Big Kill Switch" theory isn't true, just that it doesn't appear to match the facts.

Shane
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Anonymous Coward, 10 Feb 2011 @ 6:12pm

Not really a kill switch. They turned off the power. There isn't some big red button marked "internet disconnect" anywhere.

Sort of a non-story.
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Anonymous Coward, 10 Feb 2011 @ 6:33pm

Re:
Legal or not, flipping an internet kill switch would probably result in public outcry (if not a mob of peasants with pitchforks and torches heading to D.C.)
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Anonymous Coward, 10 Feb 2011 @ 7:42pm

I've said it before, the effects of killing the internet are magnitudes worse than any "cyber terrorists" could pull off.

If I wanted to destroy the US Economy, I'd completely revel in the fact that the US Government would overreact over a minor network DDoS (or something similar).
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Joel Coehoorn, 10 Feb 2011 @ 8:25pm

Accident of Engineering
This was an accident of engineering more than a design of government.

If you're looking to bring a new fiber to link to Egypt, where are you gonna put it? It's just natural that most of Egypt's outside access hits Cairo first. There might be a dumb relay elsewhere (say, on the Mediterranean Coast), but to keep average latency down you'll want the first real routing hop for your link to be in Cairo. And it makes sense most of the links in Cairo would be in just one or two places that could be turned off just by cutting the power.
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Anonymous Coward, 10 Feb 2011 @ 8:54pm

Re:
Wouldn't surprise me one bit that we already have the switch in place, just not the legislation to justify actually flipping it without public outrage. You know they will flip it one day, and blame it on a cyber attack, making the whole thing on a severely distorted interpretation of the patriot act somehow.
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teka (profile), 10 Feb 2011 @ 9:54pm

Re:
The point is that a huge portion of an interconnected web of systems all tied to a single spot that could be shut down.

Its like never realizing that all of the traffic in your town routes around to a single intersection, and one day a single small fender-bender (or road-cones, the analogy is getting stretched a bit) serves to shut down everything.

And i am certain that the concept of "internet disconnect" came up somewhere.

politically connected manager: We have to find a we to shut down all internet traffic!

reluctant IT tech: well, in theory if you simply shut down This data-switch here, it will shut down all the data flow between here and everywhere, but i don't suggest..

politically connected manager: Brilliant! Throw The Switch!
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Drizzt, 10 Feb 2011 @ 10:23pm

Re: Question...
Well, each ISP has sort of a switch and can shut down their own network. But what is suggested in the cited article is, that the government went to the CIX (or whatever form that has in Egypt). And that is really a problem, because if the relevant CIX sits in the country which likes to turn off internet access, the government just needs to pull the plug there to severely cripple the net in the country (and most likely neighbouring ones too). Depending on how the network is set up in your country a few might still have service (whenever there is one ISP with an independent connection not willing to bough to the government or if you live close enough to the border to be reached by wireless services from the neighbouring country).

But AFAIK in Egypt the providers bowed to the will of the government (on might argue they didn't have much of a choice) and the government just threatened they'd pull the plug in the CIX (which was probably not very likely as the government allowed one ISP to continue service, rumour has it, that that ISP had certain vital (read Suez Canal) services in its net block, though I haven't been able to confirm this; but it would at least explain why they didn't force the remaining ISP to shut down too)).

Cheers,
Drizzt
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Beta (profile), 10 Feb 2011 @ 11:12pm

sticking my tongue in a light socket is good because...
The presentation concludes that the ministry�s course of action in obeying the orders may have some positive effects in the future: �Itʼs unlikely that Egyptʼs communications ministry will ever be asked to ﬂip that switch again.�

The quotation is from the presentation, but "positive effects" comes from Wired. In the context of the presentation, the quote could be read as "they'll never make THAT mistake again". Honestly, I can't understand how anyone could consider it a "positive effect, unless a) they're so authoritarian that they think teaching the people not to speak out is worth crippling the economy, or b) they're so stupid that they think doing something stupid and getting burned is a smart way to avoid doing that stupid thing in the future. (And considering that Homeland Security wrote the presentation, both are possible.)
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John Duncan Yoyo, 11 Feb 2011 @ 12:36am

Re: Re:
Something like that happened on Sept 11. There was a big node destroyed when the World Trade Center fell. It did more damage to the phone system but it messed up things up and down the east coast.
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alexsmth114 (profile), 11 Feb 2011 @ 3:35am

(To the dictators like Mubarak, short and long term economic damage is pretty much irrelevant when they are fighting for survival.) I agree with you bro!!..
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weneedhelp (profile), 11 Feb 2011 @ 10:00am

Dont kid yourself - Kill switch
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qy3eOCkLVaw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e9WStvRc0rQ
http://www.y outube.com/watch?v=v6o792T2XNM

At this point I do not doubt for a minute that the NSA's equipment is in the middle, not just split.
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grumpy (profile), 15 Feb 2011 @ 4:39am

Re: Re:
Ceausescu wasn't exactly a pauper. Didn't help him much though. :-)
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