Syria Experiences BGP Control Plane Disruption Lasting 12 Hours

Syria experienced a significant disruption to its internet control plane visibility beginning on August 13. The event lasted approximately 12 hours, from 12:30 UTC to 00:30 UTC the following day, and primarily affected the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) signal.

Technical Details

The disruption recorded a severity score of 1,792. The affected BGP signal measures the stability and visibility of routing announcements for the country’s IP address prefixes on the global internet. During the event, the average number of visible BGP routes dropped by approximately 1% from its peak. Concurrent measurements of active network reachability, known as ping-slash24, showed a 12% drop in the number of responsive IPv4 network blocks. A separate backscatter measurement signal, merit-nt, which serves as a proxy for aggregate connectivity, recorded a more pronounced drop of 43% from its peak value.

The cause has not been publicly attributed.

Connectivity was reported restored by the end of the observation window.