Russia to disconnect from the internet as part of a planned test
Russia to disconnect from the internet as part of a
planned test
Russia's internet contingency plan gets closer to
reality.
By Catalin Cimpanu for Zero Day | February 11, 2019 --
00:33 GMT (16:33 PST)
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) reported last week.
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.
Roskomnazor will inspect the traffic to block prohibited
content and make sure traffic between Russian users stays inside the country,
and is not re-routed uselessly through servers abroad, where it could be
intercepted.
A date for the test has not been revealed, but it's
supposed to take place before April 1, the deadline for submitting amendments
to the law --known as the Digital Economy National Program.
The test disconnect experiment has been agreed on in a
session of the Information Security Working Group at the end of January.
Natalya Kaspersky, Director of Russian cyber-security firm InfoWatch, and
co-founder of Kaspersky Lab, presides over the group, which also includes major
Russian telcos such as MegaFon, Beeline, MTS, RosTelecom, and others.
RBK reported that all internet providers agreed with the
law's goals, but disagreed with its technical implementation, which they
believe will cause major disruptions to Russian internet traffic. The test
disconnection would provide ISPs with data about how their networks would
react.
Finanz.ru also reported that local internet services
Mail.ru and Yandex.ru were also supportive of the test disconnection.
The Russian government has been working on this project
for years. In 2017, Russian officials said they plan to route 95 percent of all
internet traffic locally by 2020.
Authorities have even built a local backup of the Domain
Name System (DNS), which they first tested in 2014, and again in 2018, and
which will now be a major component of the Runet when ISPs plan to disconnect
the country from the rest of the world.
Russia's response comes as NATO countries announced
several times that they were mulling a stronger response to cyber attacks, of
which Russia is constantly accused of carrying out.
The proposed law, fully endorsed by President Putin, is
expected to pass. Ongoing discussions are in regards to finding the proper
technical methods to disconnect Russia from the internet with minimal downtime
to consumers and government agencies.
The Russian government has agreed to foot the bill and to
cover the costs of ISPs modifying their infrastructure and installing new
servers for redirecting traffic towards Roskomnazor's approved exchange point.
The end goal is for Russian authorities to implement a web traffic filtering
system like China's Great Firewall, but also have a fully working country-wide
intranet in case the country needs to disconnect.
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