Russia plans to completely disconnect itself from the internet to see what happens

[William Gayde]

The big picture: A recently proposed Russian law would mandate that service providers be able to completely disconnect Russia from the internet. The government wants this ability to ensure they can protect their internet assets from foreign aggression and be able to route all traffic internally. The test is planned for sometime in the coming weeks but the exact date is unknown.

The goal of the whole experiment is to gather information and provide potential amendments for the Digital Economy National Program, a piece of legislation put before the Russian parliament. In addition to being able to disconnect from the broader internet, the proposed law also requires ISPs to install equipment to reroute all Russian traffic through the Roskomnazor, the government body that is responsible for censorship and tracking the online activities of Russian citizens.

They want the ability to inspect traffic and ensure it is not routed outside of Russia. This is similar to the Great Firewall of China, but with the ability to maintain independence with an isolated intranet if needed.

A country-wide test like this has never been done before, so Russian telecoms are eager to see what will happen. It's not clear if this test will disrupt internet connectivity inside Russia or not but all internet providers have agreed to participate.

Russia did create a local DNS backup, so theoretically, Russians should still be able to access sites hosted within Runet (the Russian internet).

Russia service providers as a whole have been working towards this disconnect for several years but are still unsure of exactly how to perform the disconnect to minimize downtime.

Putin is expected to sign the program into law but wants to make sure everything will happen according to plan. The government has also agreed to pay for the additional infrastructure needed to reroute traffic appropriately.

Permalink to story.

https://www.techspot.com/news/78689-russia-plans-completely-disconnect-itself-internet-see-what.html

 

[fps4ever]

Yeah, good luck with that Putin...

 

[toooooot]

Memes will die

 

[VitalyT]

protect their Internet assets from foreign aggression

LOL, Russia is the aggressor.

 

[Evernessince]

Russia produces like what, 0.0001% of internet content? If anything it's a boon to the world when their internet is down.

 

[Cycloid Torus]

Will this affect my copy of STALKER?

 

[jonny888]

From a purely scientific perspective of "what if?" it's probably quite interesting. But you have to wonder and worry slightly about the kind of mentality that believes something like this might be necessary in the near future. I'm sure some will argue that pro-active defence is better than reactive and serves as justification, but still. Not exactly a step towards world peace.

 

[trparky]

Hey Russia. Why don't you disconnect from the global Internet and... not reconnect after the test is done. Heck, while you're at it give all the IPv4 addresses that you won't be using on the global Internet; we would have good use for them.

 

[TomSEA]

Russia produces like what, 0.0001% of internet content? If anything it's a boon to the world when their internet is down.

And that's all porn.

HOWEVER, will be nice not to have Russian hackers trying to scam anything and everything via the internet for a while.

 

[Rock Dirty]

"agreed to participate"

Hahahahahahahaha

 

[Alex Lahuta]

Will this affect my copy of STALKER?

STALKER was produced by a Ukrainian company

 

[LNCPapa]

Does this mean I can stop blocking *.ru at my firewall? Really though, this would be an interesting experiment. I wonder if they will publish some honest results after they've done this.

 

[Slappy McPhee]

Russia produces like what, 0.0001% of internet content? If anything it's a boon to the world when their internet is down.

I am seriously hoping that you are saying this as a troll because they are the origin of a fair amount of internet traffic with their rebroadcasting of legitimate content at a fairly moderate level. case is point is original YouTube content being stolen from the platform and then re-uploaded on various other sites, be them Russian or otherwise. Then there is all of the pirated content they serve up and lastly the hacking bandwidth they produce.

 

[PEnnn]

The US, Japan, and some other uber-connected nations will never have this experiment. Otherwise, they will have zombie millennials walking around in a daze..... something approaching the zombie apocalypse!!

 

[psycros]

From a purely scientific perspective of "what if?" it's probably quite interesting. But you have to wonder and worry slightly about the kind of mentality that believes something like this might be necessary in the near future. I'm sure some will argue that pro-active defence is better than reactive and serves as justification, but still. Not exactly a step towards world peace.

Obama wanted the capability to not only isolate the US Internet but also switch it off entirely. Rumor says he got calls from the bigwigs at Google and other tech barons suggesting it would not be in his best interest, so to speak. Personally I don't see the point in Russia trying to further isolate its people - their just going to create new ways to circumvent the security because their very good at that. I think its almost genetic after decades of communist repression. Meanwhile the Free World (or what's left of it) will have an easier time of securing its electronic infrastructure since they will be able to concentrate more on China.

 

[captaincranky]

STALKER was produced by a Ukrainian company

Are we absolutely certain Russia hasn't annexed the Ukraine completely as of now?

 

[quadibloc]

Russia produces like what, 0.0001% of internet content? If anything it's a boon to the world when their internet is down.

Given the types of content of which they produce more than 0.0001%, it's even more of a boon...

 

[captaincranky]

In reality, a good portion of the best looking "erotic art models", are from Russia. They've been perfecting the breed in the Caucasus and Ural valleys for going nigh on 40,000 years.

Not to mention very few of them deface themselves with those tacky, ugly, and potentially harmful breast implants

So here's to hoping they at least allow that part of their content to be smuggled out on flash drives.

 

[JaredTheDragon]

In reality, a good portion of the best looking "erotic art models", are from Russia. They've been perfecting the breed in the Caucasus and Ural valleys for going nigh on 40,000 years.

Not to mention very few of them deface themselves with those tacky, ugly, and potentially harmful breast implants

So here's to hoping they at least allow that part of their content to be smuggled out on flash drives.

Easily the most truthful comment on the site this month. Or year.

 

[Reachable]

From a purely scientific perspective of "what if?" it's probably quite interesting. But you have to wonder and worry slightly about the kind of mentality that believes something like this might be necessary in the near future. I'm sure some will argue that pro-active defence is better than reactive and serves as justification, but still. Not exactly a step towards world peace.

It's not hard to imagine that there are other countries who have mused about this idea and may actually have a secret system in place. Of course it's based on extreme paranoia, but so is practically every defense project.

 

[miciyu]

Many commenters here fail to acknowledge that a country's government that is bold enough to unplug its whole population from the outside world would also be bold enough to keep its international hackers active. One does not exclude the other.

Yeah, keep hoping that when another digital iron curtain appears, you'll be free from Russian hackers!

 

[koblongata]

They will be fine... with the fact that they have massive land resources, they can still just keep digging into the ground to extract and sell oil, natural gases and such to the modern world and use that money to buy modern technologies from the modern world, just like what they have always been doing for centuries...

 

[syrious01]

So much for GTA Online lol.

 

[Gus Fring]

It would be naive to believe that only Russia employs state hackers .. who do you think implanted bugs in IRAN (scada) MOssad+ much help CIA . Its where world commerce is transacted , also information is not sipped but slurped by many commercial + Gov orgs. This sort of thing has probably been done already .. how about those anchors snapping the only F/O cable to XXXX ?? study the results without disturbing your own ppl. ...

 

[mbrowne5061]

Mr. Vova, как ты заебал...

Speaking of Russian troll farms, it'll be interesting to see which accounts go dark and which do not. I'm sure the NSA will be paying attention, since it'll tell them which ones are definitely based inside of Russia and which are not.