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The Internet IT

Russia Tests Cutting Off Access To Global Web, and VPNs Can't Get Around It (pcmag.com) 120

Posted by msmash from the no-stones-unturned dept.
An anonymous reader shares a report: Russia has reportedly cut some regions of the country off from the rest of the world's internet for a day, effectively siloing them, according to reports from European and Russian news outlets reshared by the US nonprofit Institute for the Study of War (ISW) and Western news outlets.

Russia's communications authority, Roskomnadzor, blocked residents in Dagestan, Chechnya, and Ingushetia, which have majority-Muslim populations, ISW says. The three regions are in southwest Russia near its borders with Georgia and Azerbaijan. People in those areas couldn't access Google, YouTube, Telegram, WhatsApp, or other foreign websites or apps -- even if they used VPNs, according to a local Russian news site.

Russian digital rights NGO Roskomsvoboda told TechRadar that most VPNs didn't work during the shutdown, but some apparently did. It's unclear which ones or how many actually worked, though. Russia has been increasingly blocking VPNs more broadly, and Apple has helped the country's censorship efforts by taking down VPN apps on its Russian App Store. At least 197 VPNs are currently blocked in Russia, according to Russian news agency Interfax.

Russia Tests Cutting Off Access To Global Web, and VPNs Can't Get Around It More | Reply

Russia Tests Cutting Off Access To Global Web, and VPNs Can't Get Around It

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  • If Russia wants to disconnect, let them (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    The rest of the world would be better for it. Cut them off, then sanction anyone who peers with their networks. Satellites know where they are and should do the same when crossing over whatever territory the ruskies decide is their's that particular day.

    • The rest of the world would be better for it. Cut them off, then sanction anyone who peers with their networks. Satellites know where they are and should do the same when crossing over whatever territory the ruskies decide is their's that particular day.

      Honestly, if we actually believe the hyperactive reporting about Russian attacks via the internet, shouldn't this be something that already happened? If a country proves that it can't be trusted on the global network, do they deserve access to it? Or is it still more profitable for the powers that be to allow access and just deal with the constant onslaught of bad actors? I think that's a fair question. When someone is a bad actor in public, you take them out of the public. When a region or state is a bad a

      • I can say that many organizations do block Russia, Belarus, and all embargoes countries. Of course the Russian criminals use VPNs to evade this.
      • No, firewalling (even airgapping) average Russians from the Internet is not going to stop government-sanctioned agents of Russia from finding access to the open global internet, not one bit. It's about 1000x easier than sneaking millions of barrels of oil out to the global market under sanctions, yet even that is happening all the time.

        Probably not even sophisticated nongoverment bad actors like ransomware gangs for that matter. Containing any relative small, expert, well-resourced group is going to be

        • Re:If Russia wants to disconnect, let them (Score:4, Insightful)

          by Tailhook ( 98486 ) on Wednesday December 11, 2024 @06:01PM (#65006623)

          not going to stop government-sanctioned agents of Russia from finding access

          Correct. And also naïve. Blocking easy roads is a useful strategy: the bad actors must then use the hard roads, increasing their exposure, and the exposure of whomever is responsible for the roads that remain.

          Conflict is about pressure. Applying pressure is often effective, even when it cannot deliver prefect results.

          • Re:If Russia wants to disconnect, let them (Score:4, Insightful)

            by dpidcoe ( 2606549 ) on Wednesday December 11, 2024 @06:21PM (#65006673)

            Blocking easy roads is a useful strategy: the bad actors must then use the hard roads, increasing their exposure, and the exposure of whomever is responsible for the roads that remain.

            You're skipping over a whole lot of nuance there. Blocking the easy roads always has a cost, and it has to be worth the benefits. How much harder is it to circumvent? How much is the exposure increased? What's the cost to blocking and enforcing that block?

            I'm no expert, but I'm pretty certain that blocking off a country from the internet would be trivially easy to circumvent for state level actors. Especially if they've got access to space. If space was out for some reason, there are plenty of other ways to sneak a data pipe (and even a really fat pipe) out of the border. Hell, even if we could project some kind of faraday cage over the entire country they could just dump a truckload of state agents into some other country and set up a troll-farm over there.

            All you'd end up achieving is cutting off all of the "normal" people from the rest of the world while the state agents and well connected oligarchs ignore the ban. At that point you're ensuring that the people trapped in the country can only access whatever info their government feeds them, they can't publish anything to the open internet about the internal goings on, and you're still having to deal with all the shitheads in power causing problems.

            • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

              by codebase7 ( 9682010 )

              All you'd end up achieving is cutting off all of the "normal" people from the rest of the world while the state agents and well connected oligarchs ignore the ban. At that point you're ensuring that the people trapped in the country can only access whatever info their government feeds them, they can't publish anything to the open internet about the internal goings on, and you're still having to deal with all the shitheads in power causing problems.

              And now you know why Russia is so eager to ban themselves from the global internet. To make it easier to control their population. While still allowing themselves the benefits of the global internet.

              Personally, I'd rather have the normal Russian citizens on the net than the Russian state agents and well connected oligarchs, but if Russia denies their own citizens, I see no reason why we have to allow the Russian state agents and well connected oligarchs. They wanna pick and choose who gets to be online?

            • I participated in a decision recently to block Russian and Belarussian IP addresses from systems. The cost of doing so was essentially zero. It was really just a checkbox in a WAF. The total legitimate traffic from these countries was zero and there was an increase in malicious traffic. Obviously the malicious actors didn't just throw up their hand and decide to take up new careers raising kittens. That's not the same as blocking Russian traffic at an ISP level. But the current situation is that the R

              • I participated in a decision recently to block Russian and Belarussian IP addresses from systems.

                My (former) employer had that discussion. In 2009! They've been blocked ever since. Special case though, that employer had no need of contacts outside the USA so just about everyone got blocked too. We went from over 4 million known/highly suspect packets per minute to nothing.

                • Prior to the Ukrainian invasion, we did some business in Russia, so it wasn't quite so simple for us. But once there was a decision not to do business there, the next decision followed pretty easily.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by mjwx ( 966435 )

              All you'd end up achieving is cutting off all of the "normal" people from the rest of the world while the state agents and well connected oligarchs ignore the ban. At that point you're ensuring that the people trapped in the country can only access whatever info their government feeds them, they can't publish anything to the open internet about the internal goings on, and you're still having to deal with all the shitheads in power causing problems.

              Erm... that's the point.

              Keep the hoi polloi ignorant and compliant, the privileged few get to do what they want.

          • Do you realize how easy the 'hard road' is here? Or are we just assuming that India and China are going to play along with this for some reason?

            To be clear, here are the steps involved for a Russian getting a connection to the open Internet, if the Russian government wants them to:

            1. Step 1) connect to a proxy in China.

            That's it, there are no more steps.

            • I work with a number of mid sized IT service providers across North America. The number of remote attacks has increased so exponentially over the last 1-2 years (presumably due to geopolitical reasons and incorporation of AI) that we pretty much drop any packets originating outside of a very few countries, unless we receive signed authorization w/ business reasons from our clients. Russia is going to have to make new friends.

            • Re: (Score:3)

              by Tailhook ( 98486 )

              Step 1) connect to a proxy in China.

              There are at least four consequences to this:
              1.) China takes a reputational hit on behalf of Russia.
              2.) Russia becomes beholden to China to continue conducting its activity.
              3.) Russia opsec is compromised to China as China can observe Russia's activity.
              4.) China becomes a lever for diplomatic pressure against Russia.

              Everything always has a cost. Pressure on the enemy increases their costs. Increasing your enemy's costs is winning.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by jhoegl ( 638955 )
        Yes, it should have happened a long time ago.

        It should also happen with China, North Korea, and for phones, India.

        They prey on us ad-nausium and we have not received protections from our government.

  • Drag the anchors (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Ogive17 ( 691899 ) on Wednesday December 11, 2024 @05:21PM (#65006499)
    Maybe it's time to accidentally drag our anchors and sever every connection linking Russia to the rest of the world.

    • Nah, that's just silly. Dark fibre's just as dead as cut fibre, except it can be used later.

      Just route all packets from Russia to the Great Bit Bucket. I imagine they'd try going through China or Iran or Belarus or something, but those can be brought onboard. They can't afford to be cut off from the West just for Putin.

      It might be a lot easier to manage than the other sanctions levied against them.

      • We could bring China onboard by treating them like an ally instead of an enemy. While we're at it maybe we can do the same thing to Russia. Super sneaky tactics for mitigating foreign threat actors.

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by Anonymous Coward

          While we're at it maybe we can do the same thing to Russia.

          Russia is an enemy.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Bahbus ( 1180627 )

          China is useless.

        • Re: Drag the anchors (Score:5, Informative)

          by Kernel Kurtz ( 182424 ) on Wednesday December 11, 2024 @08:53PM (#65006945)

          We could bring China onboard by treating them like an ally instead of an enemy. While we're at it maybe we can do the same thing to Russia. Super sneaky tactics for mitigating foreign threat actors.

          Russia had a chance to be part of the civilized world but they ended up with Putin instead. When he dies perhaps they will have another chance. Hope they use that one better.

          • Leader-blaming ignores group guilt. (Score:5, Insightful)

            by couchslug ( 175151 ) on Thursday December 12, 2024 @04:32AM (#65007511)

            Blaming leaders is a reflex for those who desperately, cravenly, passionately want to believe evil politicians are unnatural rather than normal products of their cultures. Leader blaming ingores the people who MADE them leaders, their millions of followers, who eagerly rewarded them with adulation and power.

            Russia is unique. It never underwent positive reformation, switching degenerate savage rulers instead who had no problem killing millions of people including other Russians. Only Mao and Hitler had competitive body counts.

            It wasn't Russian leaders who pulled the triggers, it was the several million strong Russian security forces and their military with popular support. Today Putin shoots no one, but other Russians he leads do and are self-evidently fond of not just killing but rape, looting, and other individual, personal self-indulgence. The body counts more than support my contention.

            Unlike Germany or Japan, Russia was victorious in WWII winning not just the Warsaw Pact conquests but validating Stalinism. That's comparable to a Hitler victory and Russian popular culture reflects this. Stalin killed millions but no one Russians who matter care about so he's firmly in the Russian pantheon of heroes.

            • Leader blaming ingores the people who MADE them leaders

              Not really. Your comment is only appropriate in a well engaged democracy. There you can definitely blame a people for their leaders. I.e. the world will really blame Americans for Trump, but Russians had no say in Putin what so ever. And I don't mean no say in the figurative sense, I mean literally now speaking out against the government will net you a one-way ticket to the Gulag.

              You've defined Russia based on a subset of bad actors but blamed the result on the population itself. People follow leaders, an e

              • Not really. Your comment is only appropriate in a well engaged democracy. There you can definitely blame a people for their leaders. I.e. the world will really blame Americans for Trump, but Russians had no say in Putin what so ever. And I don't mean no say in the figurative sense, I mean literally now speaking out against the government will net you a one-way ticket to the Gulag.

                You've defined Russia based on a subset of bad actors but blamed the result on the population itself. People follow leaders, an end of a the head of a regime very much does trickle down into the rest of a population.

                In Nazi Germany Hitler was one of few with excuses for their actions. The rest of the population with functioning brains had no such excuse for theirs. Neither is it fruitful to "speak out" or "protest" against established tyrants. All of us lend legitimacy to our leaders and give our consent to be led and thus to some degree we are all responsible for the behavior of our governments.

                There are many Russians in Russia and elsewhere who are not cowards and do not hide behind excuses working to do what is n

              • You're a tremendous apologist for genocidal actions. Wow.

            • It wasn't Russian leaders who pulled the triggers, it was the several million strong Russian security forces and their military with popular support.

              https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
              https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

            • Stalin killed millions but no one Russians who matter care about so he's firmly in the Russian pantheon of heroes.

              Let me change that slightly: "Stalin killed millions but no one Russians remember so his legacy has improved as time has passed."

              The other person who responded to you was too generous: there's really nothing positive which can be said about Stalin's tenure, even if you ignore all the killing. Winning the war by shoveling Russian bodies down the barrels of German guns is not a positive. Any leader of Russia could have done that and very likely have done it better. That's like giving Trump credit for "Oper

          • Russia had a chance to be part of the civilized world but they ended up with Putin instead. When he dies perhaps they will have another chance

            Putin was fine until he started meeting regularly with Kissinger. [youtube.com] Ukraine is a direct result of Kissinger giving one last "fuck you" present to the world.

            • The only person responsible for Putin's actions is Putin. Everyone wants to blame someone else for their own bad behaviour these days.
              • Ok? Blame is up to god and to courts.

                I'm talking about what happened, not blame. If you can't wrap your head around that concept, up your IQ.

                • I'm talking about what happened, not blame.

                  Indeed that is why we are here talking about Putin invading Ukraine, not Kissinger invading Ukraine.

                  • Yeah, and now you're being intentionally obtuse. Putin didn't invade Ukraine, Russia's military did. Putin is still in Russia. Stop playing dumb.

                    • Yeah, and now you're being intentionally obtuse. Putin didn't invade Ukraine, Russia's military did. Putin is still in Russia. Stop playing dumb.

                      Yes, Putin ordered his military to invade Ukraine. Are you suggesting Kissinger ordered Putin to order his military to invade Ukraine? There are enough reasons to dislike Kissinger without needing to make him into some sort of boogeyman in current (relatively) international affairs.

                    • It seems the confusion comes because you don't realize how active Kissinger was with both Putin and Xi. He met with them both regularly.
                    • I'm sure he was treated with suitable importance by both of them LOL.
                    • "Suitable importance" for him would have been to drop him out on the side of the road with the other trash. He's not the worst person of the century but he's on the list.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Tom ( 822 )

            It's not that simple.

            Putin came to power in 1999. When Russia was just starting to join the western sphere. For the next 10-15 years, all that went on without a hitch and everyone on all sides was happy.

            So it's not Putin alone. Something shifted after around 2015 or so. Certainly Putin having consolidated his power into being essentially unassailable is a factor, and I think the financial crisis hit Russia harder than the official media was allowed to say. I know several affluent Russians who left the count

          • I'm genuinely curious as to your opinion of this: https://responsiblestatecraft.... [responsibl...ecraft.org] . Whilst I was an adult at this time I really know little about the American response to the collapse of the USSR etc.
            • I'm not American so I can't speak to that perspective. That was certainly an opinion piece, and I'm not going to pick it apart, but I will say I don't think the push to expand NATO was primarily due to Clinton's vanity, but rather that the former Soviet states wanted very badly to make sure they would never be going back to what they had experienced under the USSR and NATO was the way to do that. Can't say as I blame them. If anything it seems to me they were prescient.
        • Such common sense would shake up the entire world. Plenty are brainwashed, however treating them as friends would be one thing trusting them another. If we could do the first without the second it would be genius.
        • We spent 30 years trying to treat China like an ally. A CCP defector said that they never left a cult like obsession with a cold war against the West. It takes two to tango.

        • You should study some history, because that tactic is what resulted in today's situation. Not that the US hasn't been fairly threatening and exploitative around the world for much longer than I've been alive, but Russia and China were never really interested in a cooperative relationship on the international stage.

          I think China's the more tolerant one, though. You can deal with China (excluding Tibet, Hong Kong, and Taiwan). Russia's just always looking for an opportunity to fuck you up in a dark alley

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by linuxguy ( 98493 )

          > We could bring China onboard by treating them like an ally instead of an enemy. While we're at it maybe we can do the same thing to Russia. Super sneaky tactics for mitigating foreign threat actors.

          You think that if anyone asks Putin nicely to stop invading other countries, he will actually listen?

          NATO was created as a defense against Russia. Because Russia can't help itself do Russian things. Top of the list is invading and stealing land. Ask Georgians and Ukrainians.

          China wants to invade Taiwan.

        • How has that worked out for the past 50 years?

          You had your chance to join the civilized world. You took advantage of our hospitality, and now the offer is being withdrawn.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by bill_mcgonigle ( 4333 ) *

      Wow, collective punishment against a population is a war crime.

      I did not see that coming.

      • There is a grey area where the resources are being used to make war.

        However, those of us who are not at war with Russia don't have an excuse.

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by WaffleMonster ( 969671 )

        Wow, collective punishment against a population is a war crime.

        This statement is as absurd as asserting imposing sanctions and war reparations constitute collective punishment. If Russia wants to use Internet to wage hybrid war against the rest of the world it is in no way shape or form a "war crime" to cut them off.

      • Are you trying to claim that sanctions are a war crime?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by NaCh0 ( 6124 )

      Maybe it's time to accidentally drag our anchors and sever every connection linking Russia to the rest of the world.

      And blow up their undersea natural gas pipelines too!

      Oh wait, the CIA already did this.

  • Some VPNs worked. For now. (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    >>> Russian digital rights NGO Roskomsvoboda told TechRadar that most VPNs didn't work during the shutdown, but some apparently did. It's unclear which ones or how many actually worked, though.

    So. It was all a test to fish out the remaining working VPNs. Be assured that fewer will work the next round, and for the showdown the "selected" regions will surely be in the dark - only accessing the allowed media.

    • As long as you may access arbitrary server i beleve there will always be some vigilante lije snowflake network helping unrestricted networking. Like, as long you byt a random vps or any of trillions residential or rotating proxies you can access the internet
  • three payment tiers, regional network, national network, global network. Regional networking would be a godsend for an already overextended infosec industry.

    • Sounds kind of like phone service back in the 90's, where you had to pay for "long distance" service when calling outside your city, and "international" rates for calls to other countries. I don't exactly have fond memories of those days.

      And let's not give ISPs excuses to charge us more than they already do. They pay zero more for those international connections, than they do for the connection across town.

  • In America, people use ad blockers (Score:4, Funny)

    by Gavino ( 560149 ) on Wednesday December 11, 2024 @05:53PM (#65006603)
    In Soviet Russia, internet blocks YOU

  • Is Starlink available in Russia? (Score:3)

    by schwit1 ( 797399 ) on Wednesday December 11, 2024 @05:54PM (#65006607)

    Were embassies/consulates blocked too? Were phones blocked?

    • Of course, there will always be workarounds. But what this effectively does is raise the *price* of connecting outside the country. And that will be enough to prevent most from having access.

    • Were embassies/consulates blocked too? Were phones blocked?

      Embassies from the larger countries will have satellite communications available (either their own nation's birds, of from a contracted 3rd party such as intelsat), although those, too, can be blocked if it is deemed necessary at some future time.

  • Just not the ones doing the state sponsored ransomware thing.

  • If you roll your own https://www.wireguard.com/ [wireguard.com] server there shouldn't be a problem circumventing such blocks.

    • If you roll your own https://www.wireguard.com/ [wireguard.com] server there shouldn't be a problem circumventing such blocks.

      If you block the endpoints by IP address or null route the subnets outside of the country there is zero way for a VPN to work. It has to have something to connect to on the other side and a route path to get there.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by PPH ( 736903 )

        If you block the endpoints by IP address or null route the subnets outside of the country there is zero way for a VPN to work.

        True. But TFS said that residents of Dagestan, Chechnya, and Ingushetia were blocked. Not all of Russia. So there's a chance that the authorities didn't try to fire wall the entire country (can't have our favorite ogliarchs unable to contact their Western bankers and stock brokers). So, if an ISP in Moscow (for example) ran a VPN service on the q.t., Moscow wasn't inside the blocked zone and people in these selected provinces could still reach Moscow networks, then the VPNs would work.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by jd ( 1658 )

        That alone is not enough. You'd have to also block all multicast. Multicast doesn't use endpoints and cam be tunnelled over.

        You'd also have to block Network Mobility (NEMO) and the use of Home IPs for IP mobility.

        Even that's not enough. You'd have to disable DNS forwarding across the gap, as you can tunnel over DNS.

        Because software routing is trivial, it would also be necessary to block any roofnet that circumvented the block.

        Network bisection on a self-healing system filled with security holes and protocol

  • in soviet russia we cut you off!

  • Doubtful (Score:5, Insightful)

    by bill_mcgonigle ( 4333 ) * on Wednesday December 11, 2024 @07:21PM (#65006827) Homepage Journal

    Either it wasn't fully cut off or no VPN's worked.

    There's no way for any VPN to work if the client can't reach an endpoint.

    It sounds like they just blocked some ports.

  • Known VPN services have identifiable server addresses that can be blocked. Instead, you can set up a cheap raspberry pi (or other) at your home and use an encrypted SSH connection to that [raspberry pi] from far away. Then turn on your SOCKS proxy (part of WiFi Details on Macintosh) and check to see that your IP address shows to the world you access as that of your raspberry pi. I do this all the time, including right now. It also helps to watch sports events.

    • If you went through all that trouble, why not use OpenVPN or some kind of tunnel rather than that jank-tastic SSH+SOCKS proxy?

  • my read between the lines would ask - How do we know this was intentional on the part of Russia? it does nothing to realistically help them. They rely on the tech for communications propaganda, and control.

    This really does sound like the connection/access was interrupted by an outside party, Russia can't acknowledge that, so they are spinning it as their own actions. The regions affected just so happen to be outcasts by the main Russia, with a very disenfranchised population. Stoking the flames by cutting

  • ITT : Russia bad man.
    • Ok, I'll bite. Explain why Russia isn't a shitbag, lately? What have they done to make the world a better place?

  • Actually... (Score:3)

    by Schoenlepel ( 1751646 ) on Thursday December 12, 2024 @02:03AM (#65007355)

    I think every country should be doing this. Once in a while, cut of all links to the outside world and see which services fail or who starts complaining about something not being possible anymore all of a sudden.

    This way, you can become more self-reliant as you fix things which stop functioning when you do something drastic like this.

    Having the services running on top of the internet be dependent on a few countries is actually quite a bad thing. Countries doing something like this will quickly snuff out the gaps where they need to implement and/or change things.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Tom ( 822 )

      Exactly.

      Not to mention, if the Internet were a Russian invention and most of the important Internet companies were Russian, you could bet your ass that the USA would have long ago conducted similar experiments to make sure they don't depend on them too much.

  • Apple has to comply with Russian law as long as they do business there. If asked to remove VPN apps from the Russian app store they will do so. What does this have to do with the issue at hand? If the Russians block VPN access then any VPN app still in the app store can't be used anyway. That is not on Apple.
    • There are many misinformed comments in this post and I would get bored trying to correct most of them. If Russia cuts off access to all IPs outside of Russia, no VPN application would be useful. But I doubt this would really happen. Russian and Chinese companies need to communicate. It's likely that, when this becomes permanent, Russia will allow access to Chinese and Belarussian IP addresses. I'd say North Korea too but I don't think they even have any meaningful internet.

      Despite the great firewal

  • Senegal cuts the internet completely off each year for the high school exams, to avoid cheating.

    Everybody has their priorities.

  • In Soviet Russia, internet surf you!

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