Syria grapples with Internet outage

The Syrian government says a repair is under way solve the problem
Opposition activists report widespread power and Internet outages
U.S. official: Syria has shut down the Internet in the past
Technology has become a key weapon used by both sides of Syria's civil war




(CNN) -- The Syrian government said it's working to repair a widespread Internet outage in the country -- something opposition activists suspected could be an ominous sign.
Internet connections across Syria went down Tuesdayight, according to several global monitoring sites.
On Wednesday, the state-run Syrian Arab News Agency said an optic cable malfunction caused the outage.
A repair was under way to restore services "as soon as possible," SANA said, citing communications official Bakr Bakr.
Google reported that its services became inaccessible in Syria around 9:45 p.m. (2:45 p.m. ET) Tuesday. The Renesys, Akamai and BGPmon Internet tracking companies also reported the loss of Syrian Internet connectivity at that time.
"It seems Syria has largely disappeared from the Internet," Dan Hubbard, chief technology officer for Umbrella Security Labs, wrote in a blog post about the apparent outage.
For a while, the website for Syria's state-run news agency and several government websites were not accessible.

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Syria's battle of the textbooks


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See destruction from airstrikes in Syria


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Hear Syrian family's reaction to strikes

At one hotel in the capital, employees said the Internet was down "in the hotel and all of Damascus."
Opposition activists said the communications cutoff could be an ominous sign.
The Local Coordination Committees of Syria said the activist network would put "all responsibility on regime forces for any violation or massacres against civilians."
Hubbard said Syria has a history of Internet outages.
"Although we can't yet comment on what caused this outage, past incidents were linked to both government-ordered shutdowns and damage to the infrastructure, which included fiber cuts and power outages," Hubbard wrote.
After a similar situation in November, U.S. Ambassador to Syria Robert Ford said Syria had shut down the Internet in the past.
"The Syrian government has been monitoring (the Internet) for years," he said. "They have been using the Internet with Iranian assistance to track opposition activists, arrest and kill them."
"That is the reason why our nonlethal assistance to the Syrian opposition, we put a special emphasis on communications equipment precisely to help the Syrian people tell the world what is going on inside Syria," he said.
Technology has become a key weapon used by both sides of Syria's civil war to fight for their cause, with opposition activists using social media to report violence and a group of pro-Syrian government hackers known as the Syrian Electronic Army targeting major news organizations and activists.
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CNN's Saad Abedine, Wayne Gray and Luke Henderson contributed to this report.