In November 2019, in the wake of political demonstrations against the regime, Iran managed to selectively cut off most traffic from the global Internet while fully operating its own domestic network. It seemingly confirmed the main hypothesis our research had led us to, based on prior observation of data routing: Iran’s architecture of connectivity enables selective censorship of international traffic. This paper examines, through the case of Iran, how states can leverage the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) as a tool of geopolitical control and what are the trade-offs they face. This question raises a methodological question that we also address: how the analysis of BGP can infer and document these strategies of territorialization of cyberspace. The Internet is a network of networks where each network is an autonomous system. Autonomous systems (ASes) are independent administrative entities controlled by a variety of actors such as governments, companies and universities. Their administrators have to agree and communicate on the path followed by packets travelling across the Internet, which is made possible by BGP. Agreements between ASes are often confidential but BGP requires neighbouring ASes to interact with each other in order to coordinate routing through the constant release of connectivity update messages. These messages announce the availability (or withdrawal) of a sequence of ASes that can be followed to reach an IP address prefix. In our study, we inferred the structure of Iran's connectivity through the capture and analysis of these BGP announcements. We show how the particularities of Iran's BGP and connectivity structure can enable active measures, such as censorship, both internally and externally throughout the network. We argue that Iran has found a way to reconcile a priori conflicting strategic goals: developing a self-sustaining and resilient domestic Internet, but with tight control at its borders. It thus enables the regime to leverage connectivity as a tool of censorship in the face of social instability and as a tool of regional influence in the context of strategic competition.

中文翻译：

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数据传输路线背后的地缘政治：以伊朗为例

2019 年 11 月，在反对该政权的政治示威活动之后，伊朗设法选择性地切断了全球互联网的大部分流量，同时全面运营自己的国内网络。根据先前对数据路由的观察，它似乎证实了我们的研究使我们得出的主要假设：伊朗的连接架构可以对国际流量进行选择性审查。本文通过伊朗的案例研究了各国如何利用边界网关协议 (BGP) 作为地缘政治控制的工具，以及它们面临的权衡取舍。这个问题提出了一个我们也解决的方法论问题：对 BGP 的分析如何推断和记录这些网络空间领土化的策略。互联网是一个网络网络，其中每个网络都是一个自治系统。自治系统 (AS) 是由政府、公司和大学等各种行为者控制的独立行政实体。它们的管理员必须就通过 Internet 传输的数据包所遵循的路径达成一致并进行通信，这可以通过 BGP 实现。AS 之间的协议通常是保密的，但 BGP 要求相邻的 AS 相互交互，以便通过不断发布的连接更新消息来协调路由。这些消息宣布了一系列 AS 的可用性（或撤销），可以遵循这些 AS 以到达 IP 地址前缀。在我们的研究中，我们通过捕获和分析这些 BGP 公告来推断伊朗的连通性结构。我们展示了伊朗的特殊性 s BGP 和连接结构可以在整个网络的内部和外部启用主动措施，例如审查。我们认为，伊朗已经找到了一种调和先验相互冲突的战略目标的方法：发展一个自我维持和有弹性的国内互联网，但对其边界进行严格控制。因此，它使该政权能够利用连通性作为面对社会不稳定的审查工具以及在战略竞争背景下作为区域影响力的工具。