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Communications The Internet Technology

Russia To Disconnect From the Internet as Part of a Planned Test (zdnet.com) 161

Posted by msmash from the shape-of-things-to-come dept.
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.
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Russia To Disconnect From the Internet as Part of a Planned Test

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  • All your internet are disconnected! (Score:5, Funny)

    by registrations_suck ( 1075251 ) on Monday February 11, 2019 @09:06AM (#58103222)

    All your internet are disconnected!

  • Well someone's preparing for War. Next up China. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 11, 2019 @09:08AM (#58103238)

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

  • Muh-russia (Score:4, Insightful)

    by GLMDesigns ( 2044134 ) on Monday February 11, 2019 @09:13AM (#58103254)
    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.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

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

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

    • Re:Muh-russia (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 11, 2019 @09:42AM (#58103380)

      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. [cbsnews.com] It should also be viewed in context of Russia's liquidating their holdings of American debt instruments, [businessinsider.com] further insulating them from another form of possible retaliation.

      • With the small problem of US forces being within easy strike range of all completed gas and oil pipelines between Syria, Iran, and Russia.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Revek ( 133289 )

      They run those spambots on aws.

    • Haha, you think the disconnect applies to the government and party officials.

  • BeauHD **MOST** upset (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    What else is BeauHD going to post stories about?

    It's a full-fledged TRAGEDY!!!!

  • Update hardware. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by jellomizer ( 103300 ) on Monday February 11, 2019 @09:27AM (#58103324)

    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.

    • "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."

      Not mentioned: "technical means" to subvert the routes of worldwide traffic through hardware that performs MiTM attacks to steal everything from everybody.

  • My webserver rejoices (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    My Wordpress sites will breathe a sigh of relief and might actually serve up genuine content to some real visitors for a change.

  • Thanks Russia! (Score:5, Funny)

    by argStyopa ( 232550 ) on Monday February 11, 2019 @09:34AM (#58103344) Journal

    (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...?")

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Nice list! But the last one should be You know, maybe you should continue the test another 6 months or maybe until the 2020 elections are over?

    • or... (Score:5, Funny)

      by Comboman ( 895500 ) on Monday February 11, 2019 @10:38AM (#58103666)
      - 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).
      • If you want to go there: then how about this is when they activate their 'Doomsday' virus, that's already silently infiltrated every system on the planet, and that completely overwrites and bricks every system it's on, including critical infrastructure systems, all banking systems, and finishes off by completely toasting all routers and switches, completely destroying the Internet? Maybe even having infected satellites in orbit, which sit there and continually infect any replacement systems that come online
    • 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.

    • (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...?")

      I was just going to joke about it the other way ... "Russia does what?? How dare you ... uh ... go off by yourselves and not do anything to us ... "

  • Stand by... This could get interesting.... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by bobbied ( 2522392 ) on Monday February 11, 2019 @09:34AM (#58103350)

    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.

    • As I mentioned below, there is near zero chance of Russia being 100% isolated. There will certainly be other lines that will connect from hidden points in the west, and then ran back to Russian SVR.

      The interesting issue will be if some of the malware continues to work. That would say that the server is either outside of Russia, OR the aforementioned hidden points are running, and considered secured.

      • Awesome. Finally someone using the correct intelligence agency name instead of the usual FSB.

        • shhhh. Few here have ever worked in intelligence (and it shows). This way, you can avoid dealing with total idiots.
          As it is, there are many here that think that Putin is a communist, and that China is not.

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

      This is the quote I was looking for.

      I have had to do communications isolation before. It is easy to prevent all useful traffic from flowing. It is easy to block the majority of communications...

      but you can't block all communications.

      Somewhere within Russia, there is someone using a satellite to get out of the country and back onto the planet somewhere other than Russia.

      Somewhere within Russia, there is someone using radio waves with an end point across the border.

      Somewhere within Russia, there is someone cr

  • I have to wonder about the scale of what it would take to isolate a country. How many data pipelines would likely run into a country the size of Russia? For instance, would cutting ~20 have an impact on 80% of traffic? Or are we talking 000s, or more? I assume there's a long tail here, but that a very large percentage of all traffic is probably routed through a small number of sources...?

    --Dave

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Alci12 ( 698263 )
      Only and handful of major pipes into R afaik

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      According to my understanding of https://global-internet-map-2018.telegeography.com/ i see only 13 backbone lines. But like i said, i might not understand it completely or the map might not be complete.

      • It is a near certainty that Russia has at least 100% more that connected quietly to the internet (probably follows large gas pipelines), that are for military use only.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Nkwe ( 604125 )
      Pulling the plug on all known connections is a way to find unknown connections. If after pulling the plug, any packets find their way in or out, they will know that they haven't found all the connections. To do this you could stage software inside and outside of Russia that attempted pings in each direction. You would track any pings actually received and track down the path they took. This could be coordinated with non-Internet based data connections.

      • "To do this you could stage software inside and outside of Russia that attempted pings in each direction. You would track any pings actually received and track down the path they took. This could be coordinated with non-Internet based data connections."

        Why would they go to that much effort for such poor info if they could just subscribe to BGPMon (bgpmon.net) for a month ($13)?

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Nkwe ( 604125 )

          "To do this you could stage software inside and outside of Russia that attempted pings in each direction. You would track any pings actually received and track down the path they took. This could be coordinated with non-Internet based data connections."

          Why would they go to that much effort for such poor info if they could just subscribe to BGPMon (bgpmon.net) for a month ($13)?

          To look for unexpected paths? BGP certainly drives the bulk of routing configuration but is it guaranteed that *all* routes are manged via BGP? Granted that a small number observation points are unlikely to find rogue routes, but there may be other tests that could be done to find them. Sometimes it is worth testing the "impossible".

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AHuxley ( 892839 )
      Depends on the peering deals the Soviet Union and Russia got over the decades to the West.
      What went into East Germany, Poland.
      What was done for Russian in past years.
      The Soviet planning of a domestic network and a fully monitored international network.
      Russia had to use the same network and now has two different networks.
      The trick might be in how the long-distance connection still got separated from all other networks.
      Its stops and everything else keeps working internally as everything international
  • This seems like a setup for some sort of russian heist movie. Like someone has to get in to steal some macguffin piece of tech while there is no internet to detect them or something like that.

    odinnadtsat' druzey Oushena: coming to a theater near you.

    Note: Apparently you cant use Cyrillic script in comments, it just shows up as blank.
  • just to keep our nerd passes

  • Trump should be doing this (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    The first strike will not be nukes. There are dozens of actors that could take out the internet. A society should be resilient enough that it can susrvive without the web. This is basic civil defense. It should not be a partisan issue.

    I like pickles. We should create a society where i can go to the store and buy some pickles even if another nation r group takes down the backbone of the hyperconnecter internet new wave society

  • Actually kind of an interesting exercise (Score:5, Interesting)

    by DarkOx ( 621550 ) on Monday February 11, 2019 @10:14AM (#58103546) Journal

    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.

    • I wish the US would do this a week before elections, with a few test cuts in advance. Foreign opinion shouldn't be ignored, but there are bad actors (e.g. "troll farms") operating outside of US jurisdiction.

      I'm curious how hard it would be for the US to disconnect from the outside Internet. Hawaii and Alaska have voting populations and would need to be "inside" the firewall. Ideally we would continue to relay outside traffic through our routers to avoid impacting (say) Latin America's connectivity too mu

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by AHuxley ( 892839 )
        Re "I'm curious how hard it would be for the US to disconnect from the outside Internet."

        The CIA always needs the full cover of huge amounts of international calls, data to hide their global networks of spies in and under.
        Turn off that cover of vast US international data and peering that's global and 24/7 and every CIA spy that has data to send is stuck with a failed connection attempt that could be detected.

        The US can never have its international peering stop.
        To many people all over the world as US t

    • 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

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by DarkOx ( 621550 )

        look, I cited the very legitimate ethical, legal, freedom loving concern with the idea.

        I just think we would find lots of surprises if we actually tried something like this. Oh yeah the system should keep fine its fully redundant, oops wait its using a cert issued by a CA in $SOMEOTHERCOUNTRY and nobody set it up to send the entire chain. Boom all the clients going to fetch that intermediate CA now can't verify the server and won't connect...

        That kinda stuff is the reality of complex interconnected system

      • 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

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AHuxley ( 892839 )
      Domestic services from the Soviet Union decades went on a different local and national network, layer.
      International was a different network, layer, now digital.
      Russian kept the idea of one network, two layers. One domestic. One new, digital and international.
      Domestic and international digital networks can still work without each other.
      The ISP will still work internally to Russia. Russian games, science, education, company database, banking, medical, shopping, email, forum, social media, search engin

  • In Soviet Russia, Internet disconnects y{#`%${%&`+'${`%&NO CARRIER

  • Maybe we can get them to disconnect permanently, for their own good.
  • ...make it permanent. The rest of the world should take the opportunity to make it impossible for Russia to "reconnect". We don't need them.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Who's "we"? Maybe we don't need you either.

  • smart on their part (Score:4, Insightful)

    by WindBourne ( 631190 ) on Monday February 11, 2019 @10:31AM (#58103638) Journal
    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.

  • All jokes aside, but what about Yandex? (Score:3)

    by ctilsie242 ( 4841247 ) on Monday February 11, 2019 @10:40AM (#58103674)

    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.

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward

      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, i

  • LOL, this isn't what it sems (Score:3)

    by TomGreenhaw ( 929233 ) on Monday February 11, 2019 @11:37AM (#58104142)
    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.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AHuxley ( 892839 )
      Think back to the way the NSA and GCHQ networked in the 1950-1980's.
      Location and networks globally in real time.
      It was a network only the 5 eye nations like the UK and USA could do globally and in real time.
      South America, South Africa, Asia, Europe all on the same global network in real time back to the UK and USA.
      Russia had to use spy ships, embassy locations and human spies for that.

  • Russia in depth (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Artem S. Tashkinov ( 764309 ) on Monday February 11, 2019 @11:43AM (#58104182) Homepage

    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.

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • As soon as politicians started thinking about the Internet, I knew it would be ruined and gone. Such a shame. It was so good while it lasted. Such sense of freedom. No borders and shit. I guess we'll have to invent something else to keep the humanity connected without borders and stupid politicians.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dddux ( 3656447 )
      The most laughable thing is - they don't understand a fucking shit about how Internet works. LOL

  • So we'll be able to play counterstrike (Score:3)

    by mdhoover ( 856288 ) on Monday February 11, 2019 @11:34PM (#58107846) Homepage Journal
    Without hearing "Cyka Blyat".
    /me goes to rush b

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