syria

Three U.S. senators are asking Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to investigate recent reports that Internet-monitoring gear made by two California-based companies has found its way to Syria.

In a letter (PDF) made public today, the senators ask Clinton to investigate reports that devices made by NetApp and Blue Coat Systems were sold to Syria in a possible violation of U.S. law. The companies are both publicly traded and located in Sunnyvale, Calif., about an hour's drive south of San Francisco.

"We are deeply concerned about the reported sale of Internet monitoring and censorship technology to … Read more

Blue Coat Systems has confirmed that its devices were being used by Syria to censor the Web and said it is investigating how they got into that country despite a strict U.S. trade embargo, The Wall Street Journal reported today.

The appliances were "transmitting automatic status messages back to the company" Blue Coat executives told the newspaper.

"Blue Coat says it doesn't monitor where such 'heartbeat' messages originate from," according to the report. "Computer code reviewed by the Journal indicates that Syrians were also using other Blue Coat products, raising questions about how … Read more

Harvard University's home page was hacked earlier today in what was described as a "sophisticated" attack that briefly defaced the site with a message accusing the U.S. of supporting the uprising against Syria's president.

Accompanying an image of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad was a message that said "SyRiAn ELeCTronic ArMy WeRe HeRE," according to a screenshot captured by the BBC. The defacement included an anti-U.S. diatribe that accused the U.S. of supporting a "policy of killing" in Syria, the BCC reported:

There's been chatter about targeting the Syrian regime on Twitter and IRC channels where purported members of hacktivist groups like Anonymous hang out, but now it looks like those folks have gone and done it.

Anonymous says it replaced the home page of the Syrian Ministry of Defense site with its logo and a call for the downfall of President Bashar al-Assad. As of this writing Monday morning, the site was inaccessible.

A version of the logo and message were posted to a mirror site.

The message addresses both Syrian citizens fighting against a regime that has responded violently … Read more

Internet access came back online in Syria on Saturday after two-thirds of networks in the country became unreachable from the rest of the world in the midst of street protests on Friday. As the strife-ridden country once again became visible to the online world, videos of snipers apparently firing on peaceful demonstrators began to surface, like the unsettling clip below, which turns violent about 20 seconds in.

According to Renesys, which monitors Internet connectivity, the country's 3G data network and other ISPs disappeared from the global network grid Friday morning, but domains linked to the Syrian government remained online. … Read more

With freedom--both in the real world and online--much in the news lately, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton delivered a speech in Washington, D.C., yesterday that cautioned nations that try to block the Internet and other vital services as a way of stifling their citizens.

In her address at George Washington University on Internet freedom, Clinton pointed out that Egypt's efforts to control the protests of its citizens by cutting their lines of communication ultimately failed. Instead, people continued to protest, the government turned the Internet back on, and in the end, former President Hosni Mubarak was forced to … Read more