Sudan seems to have cut itself off from the global Internet on Wednesday. The complete blackout, reportedly caused by the Sudanese government, was confirmed by Renesys, an Internet monitoring and research firm.
We confirm #Sudan has cut itself off from global Internet 45min ago (12:47UTC) amid riots in Khartoum pic.twitter.com/dAkhxssCsu
— Renesys Corporation (@renesys) September 25, 2013
The blackout comes amid riots sparked by the government's decision to lift subsidies on oil, which caused the rise of fuel costs. Al Arabiya, a Saudi-owned Arabic news channel, also reported that the Internet was shut down by the Sudan government.
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We cannot independently confirm that the blackout was a result of government action, but Doug Madory, a researcher at Renesys, thinks that all signs point in that direction.
"What I can tell you with certainty is that they are offline, because the routes are gone it's not possible to communicate over the Internet with anyone in Sudan right now," he told Mashable. "[That] would suggest that the government may be involved."
The blackout was also confirmed by another Internet traffic monitoring firm, BGPMon.
Sudan disappeared from the Internet at 12:47 UTC Today (Sept 25). First outages in Sudan started at 10:24 UTC pic.twitter.com/QjKuZWamtF
— BGPmon.net (@bgpmon) September 25, 2013
Madory said it's hard to know exactly whether the government pulled the plug on the Internet, but it certainly affects all Internet providers in Sudan, which would be consistent with a "centrally coordinated action," he said.
"There are different Internet providers that are affected, so it can't be a technical glitch on just one of them," he explained.
At the end of June, a Sudanese Internet provider, Sudatel, was down for almost eight hours, Renesys reported at the time. That partial blackout was most likely also caused by the government in response to protests, Madory said, but it wasn't a complete blackout like the one Sudan experienced on Wednesday.
"This outage is the largest government-directed Internet blackout since Egypt in January 2011," Madory said.
Image: STR/AFP/Getty Images