Internet Censorship Capabilities in Cyprus: An Investigation of Online Gambling Blocklisting

All five Republic of Cyprus ISPs (Callsat AS24672, Cablenet AS35432, Cyta AS6866, MTN AS15805, and Primetel) used DNS hijacking as their sole blocking mechanism, creating local zone entries that override legitimate DNS replies and redirect users to ISP-controlled block pages or error pages.

§6 detection dns-poisoning generic

The Republic of Cyprus National Betting Authority (NBA) blocklist grew from 95 URL entries in February 2013 to 2,563 entries in April 2017 — approximately 27 times its initial size — with entries specifying full URL paths rather than just domain names, requiring DPI-capable infrastructure for correct enforcement.

§4.1 evaluation dpiip-blocking generic

DNS hijacking used by Cypriot ISPs to block gambling websites also suppressed MX record responses for blocked domains, rendering email delivery to those domains impossible — collateral damage not mandated by the 2012 gambling law, which required only URL blocking.

§6.7 evaluation dns-poisoning generic

Cypriot ISPs could not enforce HTTPS URL entries from the NBA blocklist because SSL/TLS interception was not deployed; connections to port 443 for blocked domains simply timed out with no block page or user notification, meaning HTTPS entries were effectively under-blocked.

§4.1 detection dpidns-poisoning generic

The northern Cyprus ISP Multimax (AS197792) employed IP-based blocking rather than DNS hijacking, and its blocked-site list — including Wikipedia, Tor Project, Wikileaks, and Psiphon — matched Turkish ISP blocklists rather than the RoC NBA gambling blocklist, demonstrating that geopolitically distinct ISP operators on the same island implement categorically different censorship regimes.

§6.6 evaluation ip-blocking tr