Iran preparing internal version of Internet

WASHINGTON — The Iranian government, determined to limit Western influence and defend itself against cyberattacks, appears to have laid the technical foundations for a national online network that would be detached from the Internet and permit tighter control over the flow of information.

The concept of a self-contained network has been reverberating within Iran for almost a decade and has often been treated with skepticism, given the significant investment in infrastructure and security that would be required. But Iranian officials and outside experts say that development of the network has accelerated following cyberattacks aimed at the country’s nuclear program.

Latest stories from Foreign

World Digest: May 21, 2013

Two allies of Georgian president face corruption charges; 13 dead in fresh violence across Iraq.

Iranian presidential candidates announced; Rafsanjani out

Jason Rezaian

Conservatives dominate the list of eight approved candidates for the June 14 election.

Israel warns Syria to halt attacks after exchange in the Golan Heights

William Booth and Loveday Morris

The clash took place along a cease-fire line in the region, raising fears of a spillover from the Syrian war.

Speed limit proposal for autobahn strikes some as simply un-German

Michael Birnbaum

In the land of BMW and Porsche, the right to drive fast on the highway is viewed by many as inalienable.

State Dept. official: Iranian soldiers are fighting for Assad in Syria

Anne Gearan

The U.S. allegation is a new acknowledgment that the Syrian conflict has become a regional war.

Gallery

Increasing tensions between United States and Iran: A string of volatile incidents has raised tensions between the two countries.

Last month, Iran’s communications and information technology minister unveiled a plan to take key government agencies and military outfits offline and onto the new network by the end of September. U.S. security researchers say they are for the first time seeing evidence of an operational network that is consistent with Iran’s publicly stated plans.

The researchers, working under the auspices of the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for Global Communications Studies, say in a report to be released this week that they have found functional versions of the sites of government ministries, universities and businesses on the network. They also found evidence of an already operational filtering capability.

At the core of the network was high-end equipment manufactured by the Chinese firm Huawei that is capable of sophisticated online surveillance of traffic. The network is already “internally consistent and widely reachable,” concluded the report, a copy of which was provided to The Washington Post.

William Plummer, vice president for external affairs at Huawei, said: “Huawei has not sold equipment to the Iranian government nor does it support monitoring traffic. Huawei only sells commercial equipment built to global standards to commercial operators.”

The findings are likely to worry Internet freedom activists and the Obama administration, which has spent tens of millions of dollars on initiatives designed to ease access to the Internet in Iran and other countries with repressive governments. Officials had expressed concerns even before the release of the latest research.

“We have concerns from not only a human rights perspective, but about the integrity of the Internet,” David Baer, deputy assistant secretary for the State Department’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor, said in an interview. “When countries section off parts of the Web, not only do their citizens suffer, everyone does.”

Experts say the Iranian government has a handful of reasons to establish a state-run alternative to the Internet. A protected Iran-only network could help officials counter U.S.-funded programs that allow Iranian activists to evade online surveillance. It could also help insulate Iranian computers from a covert campaign of cyberattacks that Iranian officials assert the United States and Israel continue to wage.