Several Iranian government and official media websites have been hacked after Anonymous announced on Twitter that they had initiated cyber-attacks against the government in support of continuing protests in response to Mahsa Amini’s death.
On Wednesday, the minister of communications, Issa Zarepour, was quoted saying: “Access to the internet in Iran may be disrupted due to security reasons.”
After a few hours, some Iranian internet users started to complain that they were unable to access Instagram and WhatsApp. As of today, Instagram and WhatsApp are banned in the country, and there has been significant internet interruption.
Issa Zarepour added that:
“Due to security issues and the debates going on currently in the country, restrictions to the internet may be decided and applied by the security apparatus, but overall we have not had any bandwidth reduction,”
Iranians are figuring out ways to access and bypass internet restrictions by utilizing virtual private networks (VPNs), such as Unseen Online-Unlimited VPN.
