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Russia To Disconnect From the Internet as Part of a Planned Test (zdnet.com)

Russian authorities and major internet providers are planning to disconnect the country from the internet as part of a planned experiment, Russian news agency RosBiznesKonsalting (RBK) reports. From a report: The reason for the experiment is to gather insight and provide feedback and modifications to a proposed law introduced in the Russian Parliament in December 2018. A first draft of the law mandated that Russian internet providers should ensure the independence of the Russian internet space (Runet) in the case of foreign aggression to disconnect the country from the rest of the internet. In addition, Russian telecom firms would also have to install "technical means" to re-route all Russian internet traffic to exchange points approved or managed by Roskomnazor, Russia's telecom watchdog.

23 of 161 comments (clear)

  1. All your internet are disconnected! by registrations_suck · · Score: 4, Funny

    All your internet are disconnected!

    1. Re:All your internet are disconnected! by NetFusion · · Score: 5, Funny

      In Soviet Russia internet disconnects you

  2. Well someone's preparing for War. Next up China. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Well, I guess it was fun whilst it lasted, before the politicians wrecked it.

  3. Muh-russia by GLMDesigns · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Think of all the spam bots and election tampering bots being down for a day or so. All those muh Russia types should be cheering.

    --
    If you're scared of your govt then you need to further restrict its powers
    Vote 3rd Party in 2016 and beyond
    1. Re:Muh-russia by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Wrong, because most of those spam and election tampering bots are actually operated from Ukraine, Holland, Estonia, Latvia and United Kingdom.

    2. Re:Muh-russia by aod7br7932 · · Score: 2

      Can't really say anything about spambots, as for election tampering... Will the US be also disconnected?

    3. Re:Muh-russia by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Think of all the spam bots and election tampering bots being down for a day or so. All those muh Russia types should be cheering.

      You've got that backwards. This is about protecting russian civilian infrastructure from retaliation. Their military operations will still be online. They aren't cutting themselves off from the internet to do anyone else any favors. The time-frame overlaps with Felonious DJT's threat to shutdown american cyber-defenses again. It should also be viewed in context of Russia's liquidating their holdings of American debt instruments, further insulating them from another form of possible retaliation.

  4. Update hardware. by jellomizer · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Being how the Russians with some other countries have militarized the internet, causing other countries to fight back, I could see this as an opportunity to update all the equipment as to stop foreign attacks on them, as well disconnect any attacks in progress.

    --
    If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
  5. Thanks Russia! by argStyopa · · Score: 4, Funny

    (Russia disconnects from Internet for short test)
    (Rest of world notices 50% drop in spam, bots, DDoS attacks)
    (Russia goes to reconnect internet. Rest of world: "You know, maybe you should continue the test another 6 months or maybe indefinitely...?")

    --
    -Styopa
    1. Re:Thanks Russia! by WindBourne · · Score: 2

      actually, it may create a reverse DDoS attack. After all, all the bots may go seeking to connected to the main server and since they can not, start tapping other servers as well.

      --
      I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
  6. Stand by... This could get interesting.... by bobbied · · Score: 5, Interesting

    A whole bunch of malware/ransomware will stop working... The real question will be how much stuff in the USA will stop because of this?

    Yes, sir, Mr. Putin sir.. This will be a very interesting test.

    Personally, I figure, even Russia doesn't have enough control over it's internet connectivity to actually isolate themselves fully.

    --
    "File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
  7. Actually kind of an interesting exercise by DarkOx · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I wonder how survivable an internet cut would really be in terms of domestic services..

    How many things are mistakenly pointed at foreign DNS sources?

    What assumptions do CDNs make about location and sources, DNS horizens etc that could prove faulty?

    What complex filters and routing cost rules applied to BGP won't handle an event of that scale well?

    What gremlins lurk in platforms like Azure and AWS that will behave badly if all routes to non-domestic hosts suddenly go away. That isnt a failure mode that gets a lot testing at a guess. Sometimes even a lot of redundancy does not roll as smoothly as we might imagine when failure modes we did not account for crop up. See Wells Fargo last week..

    Honestly I applaud the Russians for undertaking the exercises. I'd *almost* say it would be a good thing for us to do here in the good old USA to do but I am not sure I want the government this administration or any other to have a working tested kill switch because I kinda be it would be misused ultimately.

    --
    Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
    1. Re:Actually kind of an interesting exercise by strikethree · · Score: 2

      Honestly I applaud the Russians for undertaking the exercises. I'd *almost* say it would be a good thing for us to do here in the good old USA to do but I am not sure I want the government this administration or any other to have a working tested kill switch because I kinda be it would be misused ultimately.

      Gold.

      If a network is wholly owned and controlled by an entity, then that entity absolutely should do tests like this.

      That is the neat thing about America; the Federal government, nor any conglomeration of governments, own or are in control of, the various networks that participate in this glorious thing we call The Internet.

      If you hear a politician calling for a "Kill Switch", what you are really hearing is a call for centralized government typically known as a dictatorship. That is fine to create that type of government... just not in America. We are NOT going backwards no matter how much we are pulled backwards by the Old Guard.

      --
      "Someone needs to talk to the tree of liberty about its ghoulish drinking problem." by ohnocitizen
    2. Re:Actually kind of an interesting exercise by fafalone · · Score: 2

      I think you overestminate America's resiliency against government action. All the wireless networks already have actual kill switches they can be ordered to use without any oversight (it's only been done locally against protesters so far, but that demonstrated to everyone the capability was there and the government could shut off service whenever they felt like it). As far as wired internet, what are the ISPs going to do when armed agents show up with a NSL? Oh yeah, argue it in the secret court subject to full gag orders. And our Supreme Court itself favors that kind of expansive executive power anyway (and that's not a strictly partly line issue, so let's not go there, especially since one of Trump's appointees is a lot more inclined to restrain executive power than the judge the seat was stolen from). Our government may (currently) be treating (most) people nicer than Russia, but they have as much if not more power to enforce their will against all people and companies the minute they decide to stop being (kind of sort of) not so evil (to the general population).

  8. smart on their part by WindBourne · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Russia and China are working together. It makes sense to have similar first strike capabilities. And yes, this is a first strike type capability. Protecting your communications.

    --
    I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
  9. or... by Comboman · · Score: 4, Funny

    - Russia disconnects from Internet for short test.
    - Rest of world gets hit with "mysterious" virus/worm that takes down critical financial/industrial/military infrastructure.
    - Russia decides not to reconnect to protect their systems.
    - Brave Russian programmers develop "cure" for virus/worm, offer to help rest of world for "small" price (just eastern Europe).

    --
    Support Right To Repair Legislation.
  10. All jokes aside, but what about Yandex? by ctilsie242 · · Score: 2

    Not many people in the US use it, but Yandex is a very popular cloud service in Europe and other places, with businesses relying on it for day to day usage as much as businesses here in the US rely on AWS. I wonder how an outage will affect the customers using that for their day to day business.

    1. Re:All jokes aside, but what about Yandex? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Fun fact, that includes Duckduckgo. While there is some validity in a nation state testing it's infrastructure against attacks, this is not that. The testing will also confirm if Russia is able to monitor all traffic and the biggest risk believe it or not are darknet / porn servers hosted in Russia. Yes, that is a thing because it's one of the last places you'd ever expect to find them.

      One other rather interesting test will be their BGP Interception since once international carriers pull their routes, it will cause a massive recalculation inside Russian (RUNET being primary). That will shunt traffic at their interception datacenters in much the same way the NSA works in the US. If Russia is spoofing Google for example all that traffic will suddenly hit theirs and not the real Google.

      TL;dr This little test will uncover just how extensive their Government spies nationally and internationally. To announce it is quite odd.

  11. LOL, this isn't what it sems by TomGreenhaw · · Score: 2

    I'm sure they know how easy it would be to circumvent this measure from external threats getting in. All it takes is a bunch of satellite based routes and compromised consumer equipment to get in and be difficult to detect.

    Doesn't everybody really understand why the US government is so concerned about Huawei? Governments understand that all the routers running BGP control what gets blocked and what get routed. Whose routers do people think are being used everywhere?

    This "experiment" is meant to block Russian citizens from accessing the world of free speech to protect their oligarchy in the event of an emergency.

    --
    Greed is the root of all evil.
  12. Russia in depth by Artem+S.+Tashkinov · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Jokes aside the Russian mafia elites along with their God Father Tsar Putin do everything to brainwash the poor Russian people into believing the country is the best in the world despite very low wages, underdeveloped industries, technological gap, huge brain drain, horrible health care (which is roughly 20-30 years behind the rest of the world), rampant corruption, poor ecological situation in many cities, comparatively low average life span, totally malfunctioning courts and police that mainly serve the richest.

    The Internet is the only media that cannot fully control, so this could be a nice test of what else they can deprive the people of, so that the opposition has literally no means of revealing the truth about the inner workings of Russia.

    You see, in many countries of the worlds there's mafia however as for Russia mafia has its own ... state.

  13. Re:Well someone's preparing for War. Next up Chin by Shark · · Score: 2

    Actually, that's a brilliant strategy. They're waiting for Trump to show off how he can disconnect the US from the Internet much longer and much better!

    --
    Mind the frickin' laser...
  14. Re:Are there any DNS root servers in RU? by manu0601 · · Score: 2

    In Russia, there are distributed nodes of root servers F and K, operated respectively by US non-profit ISC and EU-based RIPE NCC. I assume that they would try to run without them, given they are not operated by a russian company.

  15. So we'll be able to play counterstrike by mdhoover · · Score: 2

    Without hearing "Cyka Blyat".
    /me goes to rush b