Versions of blocking the state sites: from prevention to external interference (UPDATED)

Foreign experts in the field of Internet, who preferred anonymity,  noted a number of possible reasons for blocking  states sites of the country 22 February. Among them: prevention, deep external intervention at the level of infrastructure or technical failure on the part of technicians. "Judging by the domain gov.az, all inactive sites are on the same site, and are serviced  by Delta Telecom," said the expert. In his opinion, technical problem on the server is not excluded too.  It is possible that someone from the technical staff  has broken  something, or just a server has a bad configuration.—0—

2016 February 22 (Monday) 13:58:11

The official version of blocking the Internet domain gov.az on the morning of Feb. 22 is "technical prevention". However, as Turan notes, no advance information on the prevention was spread.

The last time the blocking of government sites took place on January 16, 2012, and then a hacker group Azerian Cyber Army took responsibility. The hackers appearing as Islamist Web Engineers accused the authorities of complicity with the United States, the West and Israel, warning of the repetition of the Arab Spring in Azerbaijan.

At the same time IT specialists determined that the attack was carried out from an IP address on the territory of Iran.

Coincidentally, the current blocking of gov.az comes on the eve of the official visit of Ilham Aliyev to Iran on February 23.

Earlier, the official Iranian radio accused the Azerbaijani authorities of brutal persecution of Shiite Muslims.

Note that Azerbaijan's state sites are available on the dedicated server of the Special Security Service for Public Facilities, according to the decree of Azerbaijani President dated November 5, 2004 "in order to effectively ensure their safety." This was done after the powerful cyber attack by Armenian hackers on the government websites of Azerbaijan.

An American expert in Internet security, Eric Johnson is inclined to think that the hacking group Azerian Cyber Army, which attacked state websites of Azerbaijan on 16 January, managed to do that due to delayed software updates.

In an interview with Turan, Johnson said that the software should be updated daily. "Practice proves that most of windows programs are not secure and not updated, that makes the software accessible to hackers," he said.

The expert also noted that the number of hacking tools has increased significantly: "If previously limited number of people had such tools, now their number has increased, almost 10 times."

The number of hacking is growing daily around the world, so the question on security of servers and websites should be seriously considered.

"Attacks will continue to grow not only on public resources, but also to private sites," Johnson predicts.

State sites were placed on a special server of a security service of public facilities of Azerbaijan, according to the decree of Azerbaijani President on November 5, 2004 "in order to provide effective safety." However, the attacks showed the "holes" in the protection of servers, said the expert.

In conclusion, the expert recommended considering more seriously security, and not saving funds of state and private owners of Internet resources.  -0-

2016 February 22 (Monday) 11:58:00

Since 22 February morning the work of the Azerbaijani Internet domain gov.az has been blocked. This domain includes the sites of all the state bodies of Azerbaijan. Failure in the system began at 11:20 and continues at the time of release of this news,

Turan's attempts to get a comment from the Ministry of Communications or other public bodies have been to no avail. -03B-