Via Fox News:
While the already repressive Iranian government works to further shut down social media that helps fuel communications among thousands of protestors, the predominantly young, college-aged crowds in the street are scrambling to stay ahead with a variety of counter-censorship maneuvers.
“Iranians are used to changing. Remember we were the first ones using Twitter for political purposes in the Green Revolution in 2009, when Twitter was still largely unknown,” one activist, Ali, told Fox News. “Then it was blocked. Then Facebook came and then it was blocked. Now Instagram and Telegram.”
Iranian officials are blocking access by essentially building a “massive firewall,” according to Dave Chronister, managing partner of Parameter Security and an “ethical hacker” who has worked with the U.S government. But access hasn’t been completely cut – leaving the protesters room to maneuver.
“The Iranian government is blocking access to certain IP ranges altogether (such as news sites) and at the same time they are also allowing certain sites to be accessed,” said Chronister. “But they are using content filtering to block what they consider to be risky or subversive, for example Twitter hashtags. So the Iranian activists are using different ‘tunneling’ methods to hide their traffic through encryption and therefore bypass government restrictions – for instance, they use a Virtual Private Network (VPN).”