The simple mistake that made half of Asia lose access to porn

Warning: this article contains language of a rather sexual nature.

On Thursday night, from Russia to Hong Kong, users will have had trouble accessing www.superbigcocks.com.

That and 255 other websites, the majority of them pornographic, began dropping offline, returning blank pages while the servers showed no problems.

The reason was Iran.

The country's censorship system blocked the websites using Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) hijacking.

Essentially it introduces a false routing path to a website, directing the user away from the page they are trying to access.

However, this can be haphazard - announcing that the old route is bad and the rerouted page is good can have consequences.

For example, Iran's national telecom is pivotal for the transit of data in Oman, and for some telecommunication providers in India, Russia and Hong Kong.

As a result, users across Asia in these countries were struggling to find their porn on certain sites.

Way to spoil the fun for everyone, Iran.

HT The Verge

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