In early January, Iran proved a capability that many technologists had viewed as unlikely, the massive interference with Starlink, the satellite internet network that was meant to be immune to censorship and jamming. With what analysts call military-level GPS interference authority reduced the service that had become an important communications lifeline during earlier blackouts, drastically.
The relocation coincided with a mass internet blackout that disabled most of the nation into the almost complete digital darkness. After the blackout started, independent network monitors registered over 98% in the domestic internet traffic within 30 minutes. This was the first occasion, even the low-Earth orbit constellation of Starlink has been regarded as a workaround to the terrestrial limitations, that the system could not be consistently reached in much of the country.
The popularity of Starlink in Iran had also increased since it was activated in the 2022 protests after the killing of Mahsa Amini. Activists, journalists, and average citizens were also allowed to circumvent the state-controlled infrastructure thanks to thousands of smuggled terminals. The government using these techniques of interference was more advanced this time around. The authorities made patchy and inconsistent coverage by attacking the GPS signals that Starlink dishes need to align themselves with. There was some connectivity at the border regions, but services at urban centers were diminished by up to 80%.
Analysts highlight similarities to Russian jamming attacks in Ukraine, which SpaceX responded to by updating the software quickly. A fix of this kind is yet to be implemented in the case of Iran. Having never witnessed anything like that in his life, Amir Rashidi of the Miaan Group observed that the exactness and duration of this blackout cannot be attributed to home made technology, and this may be some form of technology that is imported, perhaps of Russian origin. The strategy avoids the necessity of intrusion into the satellites themselves, but targets the weak point in the connection between the terminal and the orbit.
The implications are far-reaching in Iran. Starlink is now an urgent infrastructure in war zones in Myanmar, Sudan, and others where it is facilitating humanitarian work and independent reporting. Should the jamming techniques used by Iran be copied in other countries, the dependability of the satellite internet in terms of censorship resistance may no longer be a possibility.
The impact of the blackout has been harsh in Iran. NetBlocks measures the economic price of a national outage to be $1.56 million/hour, and has already lost more than $130 million. Companies that depend on cloud platforms and secure communications as well as on online payments have been crippled. The whitelist policy used by the government to selective access aligned media and cut-off the rest of the populace has also contributed to the information gap.
In spite of the risks, Starlink terminals are still used. Other users have tinkered with more advanced settings to make GPS location work using the Starlink app, a hack that is disseminated in activist circles. Others have done this by moving equipment physically in search of better signals. But the parallel crackdown on hardware by the regime, including seizure of dishes during targeted raids has even caused being found with a terminal to be risky.
Elon Musk, the founder of SpaceX has allegedly made a free Starlink connection in Iran during the crisis and has waived subscription charges on dormant users. As long as cost is no longer an obstacle connectivity is the key issue. Musk and the U.S. authorities have discussed possible technical countermeasures, but there is no publicly known timeline of their implementation.
In Iran, the moment of the kill switch has so far established the limits of what can be guaranteed by satellite internet. Even the space-based networks that allow decentralization have proven not to be completely resistant to determined state interference as the blackout has shown. The case in Tehran could be a template in other regimes who want to dominate the digital realm, as Rashidi threatened, one that agitators, engineers, and policymakers will have to deal with prior to the next blackout coming.
