Syrian Computer Society

The Syrian Computer Society (Arabic: الجمعية العلمية السورية للمعلوماتية, romanized: al-Jam‘iyya al-‘Ilmiyya as-Sūriyya lil-Ma‘lūmātiyya) is an organization in Syria. It was founded by Bassel al-Assad in 1989, and was subsequently headed by his brother Bashar al-Assad,^[1] who would later become the President of Syria. It acts as Syria's domain name registration authority and has been reported to be closely associated with the Syrian state.^[2]

In May 2013, 700 domains registered by Syrians, mostly hosted at servers with IP addresses assigned to the Syrian Computer Society,^[3] were reported to have been seized by the U.S. DNS infrastructure operator Network Solutions.^[2] The domain names became registered to "OFAC Holding", believed to be a reference to the U.S. federal government's Office of Foreign Assets Control.^[3]

Some members of the Syrian Computer Society belonged to the first group of supporters of the Syrian Electronic Army.^[4]