A forensic analysis by Qurium has confirmed the blocking of the Peoples Gazette’s website by mobile network operators in Nigeria.

The Sweden-based foundation began its findings after reports on January 26 that the online newspaper’s website was inaccessible via the Internet service providers within Nigeria.

The team of cybersecurity experts began gathering information and collating records of traffic inflow from network providers, including MTN and Airtel.

Qurium’s conclusions said mobile operators deliberately implemented the restriction of access to the website of the Abuja-based digital outlet.

“Some operators have blocked the DNS resolution of the website while others such as Airtel, are using Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) to stop the traffic to the website once the website name is sent in the SSL negotiation (Hello Client),” Tord Lundström, Technical Director of Qurium, and head of the forensics team, said.

The analysis revealed that, starting on January 26, communication ceased after the website’s name popped up in the “Client Hello” message when mobile browsers swapped information with the IP address in Cloudflare’s distribution network.

According to the forensic report, the provider would exchange the first set of data that establishes the session with the webserver but no other information was exchanged beyond that point.

Readers trying to access the paper’s content would then receive different error messages depending on the web browser used and the form of blocking employed.

https://www.peoplesgazette.com/forensic-analysis-confirms-nigerian-govt-telcos-attacked-peoples-gazette-website/