Iran accused of using online censorship and hacking to sway presidential poll
Keyword-based filtering allows blocking of sites and texts containing candidates' names and slogans, say security experts
A young girl holds a
photograph of Saeed Jalili, Iran’s lead nuclear negotiator and a
candidate in the presidential election on 14 June. Photograph: Vahid
Salemi/AP
Iranian authorities are mounting a sophisticated campaign of online censorship, hacking
attacks and filtering to influence the country's imminent presidential
elections, according to reports from people inside the country and
security researchers outside.
Iranians are finding that text messages or websites containing certain words, such as candidates' names or slogans, are being intermittently blocked, while some news sites within the country are taken offline entirely. Those that try to relocate overseas have been subjected to extensive DDoS (distributed denial of service) attacks – which make it impossible for regular users to access websites – from computers in Russian or eastern Europe, while reporters and activists have reported receiving phishing emails containing viruses or surveillance software.
The approach marks a stepped increase in sophistication in internet filtering in Iran. During the 2009 election and the uprising that followed, authorities sometimes simply turned off the internet, or text messaging, across the country for days at a time. Now they are working in a far more targeted manner.
The censorship also reflects the country's internal divisions. Until a year ago Iran's ministry of information and communications technology was in charge of policing the country's online community but in 2012 the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, ordered officials to set up the Supreme Council of Virtual Space, a body that is closer to Khamenei than to the outgoing president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. That council sits at the top of a complex web of organisations that monitor and filter communications in the country.
Collin Anderson, a Washington DC-based security researcher who works with Iranian activists and NGOs, said the censorship tracked such internal divisions, with Ahmadinejad's favoured presidential candidate, Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei, among the targets of filtering.
"Mashaei and Ahmadinejad's slogan was 'Spring is arriving', and slogans pertaining to spring and to Mashaei's name were being disrupted in SMS messages during the campaign," he said. "They were using the censorship capabilities of the state to stifle the abilities of these individuals to organise."
Anderson said Iran's carefully targeted approach reduced the economic impact of internet shutdowns, and also confounded attempts to circumvent such controls.
"Four years ago the response was to take down the mobile networks for 45 days, or block text messages for certain times. This is a lot more specific; it's keyword-based filtering," he said. "They have a calculation: how much they're being threatened, and how much the status quo is being threatened, will directly influence the degree of internet censorship. They try to minimise the collateral and economic damage."
Most of the computer equipment needed to monitor and block communications in such ways is "dual-use": the same capabilities allow for the traffic management needed to operate and keep the internet working in any country. Nonetheless, Anderson said his research suggested the vast majority of the infrastructure bought by Iran in recent years had been from the Chinese provider Huawei, which has been subject to congressional investigation in the US and parliamentary enquiries in the UK.
People inside Iran have felt the effects of the restrictions. More than 5m websites are blocked in Iran, including Facebook and Twitter (but Google+ is still accessible). Millions of Iranians get round blocked addresses with help from proxy websites or virtual private network services, but in recent weeks users across Iran have complained about unprecedented difficulties in using VPN services.
"I have no idea what has happened but VPNs hardly work these days," said Hassan, a Tehran citizen. "There are times when the internet is dead in Iran. A few weeks ago, on the very night when the regime announced the final list of candidates and the disqualifications, VPNs were completely down. It shows they feared revolt and were clamping down harshly."
Iran's constitutional body, the Guardian Council, has barred a large number of candidates from standing in the 14 June election. It allowed only eight candidates to run, and disqualified former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, the opposition's favourite, from standing, to the dismay of the country's many reformers.
"It seems to me that internet filtering in Iran has just become more complicated and more intricate," said an Iranian journalist who works for the conservative media in Tehran but asked to remain anonymous. "When I am surfing ordinary websites that the regime has no problem with, I have good speed and can access them easily, but sometimes it takes me ages to open my Gmail account or use some of its features, such as when I want to upload images or videos. I wonder where Iran got its hands on such complicated filtering technologies."
Former Iranian president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, centre, registers
his candidacy for the 14 June polls. Photograph: Ahmad Halabisaz/Xinhua
Press/Corbis
Iran's capabilities allow it to let normal web traffic through at
high speed, while slowing sites such as Gmail to what researchers
estimate is just 5% of regular traffic. Sophisticated online traffic
such as VPNs – which allow for anonymous internet surfing and the
bypassing of official censors – have been subtly disrupted, so that the
connection is reset once a minute.
In recent years, Iran has set up a body in charge of actively finding websites that are deemed un-Islamic or politically offensive, and blocking their websites. In December, the head of Iran's cyber-police - known as Fata - was sacked from his position when the death in custody of blogger Sattar Beheshti brought huge embarrassment for the authorities.
Iran has even crowdsourced such efforts: web users complained recently that the authorities had even taken one step forward and developed a software application (a Mozilla add-on called Filter_Internet.ir, now removed) that allowed people to report websites for official filtering.
The US announced this week that it would lift certain sanctions on the sale of consumer communication tools to Iran, including mobile phones and computers, in a move to help dissidents to avoid the regime's efforts.
"As the Iranian government attempts to silence its people by cutting off their communication with each other and the rest of the world, the United States will continue to take action to help the Iranian people exercise their universal human rights, including the right to freedom of expression," said the statement by the US Treasury Department.
The National Iranian American Council, based in Washington DC, welcomed the US's move to ease sanctions on communications.
"Lifting these sanctions is an extremely positive step," said NIAC's policy director, Jamal Abdi. "Iranians have been squeezed between a repressive government on one side and crippling sanctions on the other. Now the US is taking steps to ensure that, as Iran's government cracks down on internet access and SMS, sanctions will no longer block mobile phones, software and hardware."
Social revolution
Most of the major social networks might be banned or blocked in Iran, but that hasn't stopped the country's presidential candidates maintaining extensive social media presences.
All the major campaigns have accounts on social networks, including Twitter, Facebook and Google+, with accounts putting out messages in English and Farsi, and responding to media queries and other social users.
Several accounts are marked "official", even if not explicitly acknowledged by the campaigns, and one campaign account, belonging to 78-year-old former president Akbar Rafsanjani, even confirmed via Twitter that the candidate had been excluded from the presidential race by Iran's Guardian Council.
Saeed Jalili, thought to be Ayatollah Khamanei's preferred candidate, is widely seen as having the best social media operation - podcasts, a Twitter account, two Facebook accounts and a Google+ account, all of which are well produced.
"What's ironic is in 2009 there was this false notion of a Twitter revolution, and this could actually be it," said security researcher Collin Anderson. "Even in the most internet-repressive state, now they're using Obama-style tactics to get out their message." James Ball
Different campaigns tend to gravitate towards different social networks, though, he added. Campaigns seen as affiliated to conservatives in Iran tended to have a stronger Google+ presence, he concluded, while reformists prefer Twitter.
Iranians are finding that text messages or websites containing certain words, such as candidates' names or slogans, are being intermittently blocked, while some news sites within the country are taken offline entirely. Those that try to relocate overseas have been subjected to extensive DDoS (distributed denial of service) attacks – which make it impossible for regular users to access websites – from computers in Russian or eastern Europe, while reporters and activists have reported receiving phishing emails containing viruses or surveillance software.
The approach marks a stepped increase in sophistication in internet filtering in Iran. During the 2009 election and the uprising that followed, authorities sometimes simply turned off the internet, or text messaging, across the country for days at a time. Now they are working in a far more targeted manner.
The censorship also reflects the country's internal divisions. Until a year ago Iran's ministry of information and communications technology was in charge of policing the country's online community but in 2012 the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, ordered officials to set up the Supreme Council of Virtual Space, a body that is closer to Khamenei than to the outgoing president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. That council sits at the top of a complex web of organisations that monitor and filter communications in the country.
Collin Anderson, a Washington DC-based security researcher who works with Iranian activists and NGOs, said the censorship tracked such internal divisions, with Ahmadinejad's favoured presidential candidate, Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei, among the targets of filtering.
"Mashaei and Ahmadinejad's slogan was 'Spring is arriving', and slogans pertaining to spring and to Mashaei's name were being disrupted in SMS messages during the campaign," he said. "They were using the censorship capabilities of the state to stifle the abilities of these individuals to organise."
Anderson said Iran's carefully targeted approach reduced the economic impact of internet shutdowns, and also confounded attempts to circumvent such controls.
"Four years ago the response was to take down the mobile networks for 45 days, or block text messages for certain times. This is a lot more specific; it's keyword-based filtering," he said. "They have a calculation: how much they're being threatened, and how much the status quo is being threatened, will directly influence the degree of internet censorship. They try to minimise the collateral and economic damage."
Most of the computer equipment needed to monitor and block communications in such ways is "dual-use": the same capabilities allow for the traffic management needed to operate and keep the internet working in any country. Nonetheless, Anderson said his research suggested the vast majority of the infrastructure bought by Iran in recent years had been from the Chinese provider Huawei, which has been subject to congressional investigation in the US and parliamentary enquiries in the UK.
People inside Iran have felt the effects of the restrictions. More than 5m websites are blocked in Iran, including Facebook and Twitter (but Google+ is still accessible). Millions of Iranians get round blocked addresses with help from proxy websites or virtual private network services, but in recent weeks users across Iran have complained about unprecedented difficulties in using VPN services.
"I have no idea what has happened but VPNs hardly work these days," said Hassan, a Tehran citizen. "There are times when the internet is dead in Iran. A few weeks ago, on the very night when the regime announced the final list of candidates and the disqualifications, VPNs were completely down. It shows they feared revolt and were clamping down harshly."
Iran's constitutional body, the Guardian Council, has barred a large number of candidates from standing in the 14 June election. It allowed only eight candidates to run, and disqualified former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, the opposition's favourite, from standing, to the dismay of the country's many reformers.
"It seems to me that internet filtering in Iran has just become more complicated and more intricate," said an Iranian journalist who works for the conservative media in Tehran but asked to remain anonymous. "When I am surfing ordinary websites that the regime has no problem with, I have good speed and can access them easily, but sometimes it takes me ages to open my Gmail account or use some of its features, such as when I want to upload images or videos. I wonder where Iran got its hands on such complicated filtering technologies."
Former Iranian president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, centre, registers
his candidacy for the 14 June polls. Photograph: Ahmad Halabisaz/Xinhua
Press/Corbis
Iran's capabilities allow it to let normal web traffic through at
high speed, while slowing sites such as Gmail to what researchers
estimate is just 5% of regular traffic. Sophisticated online traffic
such as VPNs – which allow for anonymous internet surfing and the
bypassing of official censors – have been subtly disrupted, so that the
connection is reset once a minute.In recent years, Iran has set up a body in charge of actively finding websites that are deemed un-Islamic or politically offensive, and blocking their websites. In December, the head of Iran's cyber-police - known as Fata - was sacked from his position when the death in custody of blogger Sattar Beheshti brought huge embarrassment for the authorities.
Iran has even crowdsourced such efforts: web users complained recently that the authorities had even taken one step forward and developed a software application (a Mozilla add-on called Filter_Internet.ir, now removed) that allowed people to report websites for official filtering.
The US announced this week that it would lift certain sanctions on the sale of consumer communication tools to Iran, including mobile phones and computers, in a move to help dissidents to avoid the regime's efforts.
"As the Iranian government attempts to silence its people by cutting off their communication with each other and the rest of the world, the United States will continue to take action to help the Iranian people exercise their universal human rights, including the right to freedom of expression," said the statement by the US Treasury Department.
The National Iranian American Council, based in Washington DC, welcomed the US's move to ease sanctions on communications.
"Lifting these sanctions is an extremely positive step," said NIAC's policy director, Jamal Abdi. "Iranians have been squeezed between a repressive government on one side and crippling sanctions on the other. Now the US is taking steps to ensure that, as Iran's government cracks down on internet access and SMS, sanctions will no longer block mobile phones, software and hardware."
Social revolution
Most of the major social networks might be banned or blocked in Iran, but that hasn't stopped the country's presidential candidates maintaining extensive social media presences.
All the major campaigns have accounts on social networks, including Twitter, Facebook and Google+, with accounts putting out messages in English and Farsi, and responding to media queries and other social users.
Several accounts are marked "official", even if not explicitly acknowledged by the campaigns, and one campaign account, belonging to 78-year-old former president Akbar Rafsanjani, even confirmed via Twitter that the candidate had been excluded from the presidential race by Iran's Guardian Council.
Saeed Jalili, thought to be Ayatollah Khamanei's preferred candidate, is widely seen as having the best social media operation - podcasts, a Twitter account, two Facebook accounts and a Google+ account, all of which are well produced.
"What's ironic is in 2009 there was this false notion of a Twitter revolution, and this could actually be it," said security researcher Collin Anderson. "Even in the most internet-repressive state, now they're using Obama-style tactics to get out their message." James Ball
Different campaigns tend to gravitate towards different social networks, though, he added. Campaigns seen as affiliated to conservatives in Iran tended to have a stronger Google+ presence, he concluded, while reformists prefer Twitter.
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