Exam Season Brings Fresh Internet Restrictions Across Three Countries
With secondary school and university exam season underway in Syria, Sudan, and Algeria, all three countries have once again moved to restrict Internet access in an attempt to curb cheating. While Syria and Sudan have returned to the multi-hour nationwide shutdown tactic they have employed in recent years, Algeria appears to have shifted its strategy from total blackouts to more targeted blocking of specific websites and applications.
Syria's Asymmetric Shutdowns Continue
Syria has a long history of Internet shutdowns dating back to 2011, but exam-related disruptions have only been a feature since 2016. The current exam cycle, which covers more than 500,000 students pursuing basic and general secondary education certificates, began with a first shutdown on May 30, with further disruptions observed on June 2, 6, and 12. Additional shutdowns are expected through June 21, with each taking place between 0200–0530 UTC, which corresponds to 0500–0830 local time.
As in previous years, the shutdowns are implemented asymmetrically: inbound traffic to Syria is disabled while egress traffic continues to flow. This pattern is visible in queries from Syrian clients to Cloudflare's 1.1.1.1 DNS resolver, where requests successfully exit the country but responses fail to return, generating retry floods that appear as spikes in traffic graphs.
Notably, last year the Syrian Minister of Education stated that encryption and surveillance technologies would be deployed for the first time to prevent cheating, with an apparent commitment to suspend Internet shutdowns in the future should these measures prove successful. No such suspension has materialized this year.
Sudan's Near-Complete Daily Blackouts
Sudan has likewise made nationwide Internet shutdowns a routine part of its exam administration over the past several years. This year's Secondary Certificate Exams run daily from June 11–22, excluding June 17, according to a schedule published by digital rights organization AccessNow.
Near-complete shutdowns were observed on June 11, 12, and 13 between 0530–0830 UTC (0730–1030 local time). The timing aligns with a reported communication sent to telecommunications subscribers, which stated: "In implementation of the decision of the Attorney General, the Internet service will be suspended during the Sudanese certificate exam sessions from 8 in the morning until 11 in the morning."
The disruption, while nationwide, does not appear to be absolute. Cloudflare continued to observe a small volume of HTTP requests from Sudatel, one of the country's major network providers, even during shutdown windows. This residual traffic likely comes from public sector entities, financial services firms, or other customers that remain online during the restricted periods.
Algeria Takes a Targeted Approach
Algeria has been shutting off nationwide Internet access during baccalaureate exams since 2018, prompted by widespread cheating in 2016 when exam questions were leaked online both before and during tests. Those earlier shutdowns carried a heavy economic toll, reportedly costing businesses approximately 500 million Algerian Dinars (around $3.4 million USD) per hour of lost connectivity. In 2021, exam days featured two shutdown windows: one from 0700–1100 UTC and another from 1330–1600 UTC.
More than 700,000 students are sitting for this year's baccalaureate exams between June 12–16, yet the Algerian Minister of National Education announced that no Internet shutdowns would occur on exam days — an apparent acknowledgment of the economic damage caused by prior blackouts. So far, that commitment has held.
However, traffic data suggests the government has not abandoned interference entirely. Cloudflare Radar shows two modest dips in country-level traffic during exam windows on June 13 — 0730–1000 UTC and 1330–1600 UTC, timings similar to last year's shutdown periods. Similar disruptions appear in traffic graphs for several major Algerian network providers.
Additional evidence points toward content-level blocking rather than complete connectivity loss. Network Error Logging (NEL) data, a browser-based system that reports connection failures to endpoints specified by pages that fail to load, shows clear spikes in reports from Algerian browsers during exam times. Report levels are significantly lower and more consistent during non-exam hours, consistent with attempts to reach blocked websites or applications rather than a country-wide infrastructure outage.
Wider Pattern and Costs
Syria, Sudan, and Algeria are not alone in this practice. India, Jordan, Iraq, Uzbekistan, and Ethiopia have all previously shut down or limited Internet access during exams. Whether these blunt instruments genuinely prevent cheating remains unclear, but the collateral damage is unambiguous: businesses in affected countries lose connectivity for hours at a time across several weeks, incurring significant financial costs in the process.
Live traffic data for the remaining scheduled exam disruptions is available on Cloudflare Radar for Syria, Sudan, and Algeria.
