Nations attacking their own internet (to stop cheating on exams)

Saw this super interesting post on the Cloudflare blog

Exam-ining recent Internet shutdowns in Syria, Iraq, and Algeria

Similar to actions taken over the last several years, governments in Syria, Iraq, and Algeria have again disrupted Internet connectivity nationwide in an attempt to prevent cheating on exams. We investigate how these disruptions were implemented, and their impact

blog.cloudflare.com

I've always been fascinating by DNS and global connectivity. This write-up talks through traffic patterns, DNS behavior, and network data to describe how these states are impacting their own internet to try and fight cheating on exams.

Comments

[spO0q 🐒]

DNS is at the heart of it. The very basic explanation would be something like that:

When governments "rewrite the phone book," you end-up elsewhere.

But this really good report by Cloudflare shows you it's a bit more complicated, especially the difference between TCP and UDP.

Technically speaking, it's pretty cool, but I'm afraid this is not a good sign at all. Such radical approach (vs. slightly more nuanced approaches explained in the post) could be used for less acceptable motives than anti-cheat.