One of the reasons for the recent collapse of the Russian Internet segment could be a virus infection of foreign equipment at hub stations. This was stated in an interview with "Parliamentary Newspaper" by the Chairman of the Board of the Digital Economy Development Fund, German Klimenko.
Klimenko, based on the nature of the failure, noted that most likely, at some hub station where traffic exchange occurs, something extraordinary happened in its operation. This could be some actions by Roskomnadzor on servers, system errors, external influences, and even the consequences of using infected equipment.
It is possible that the virus came to the traffic exchange point between servers, and they simply could not reach them for some time. It is possible that foreign Cisco equipment, which we still have in large quantities, turned out to be infected - routers, modules, network equipment, and so on. The scale of the problem indicates this. Something was clearly happening at a global, infrastructural level. Most likely, something really happened on the routers, and a situation arose resembling traffic jams in a big city: the shops are open, but you can't get to them because all the roads are blocked. But who caused this impact, because of which RuNet "fell", it is not yet possible to say - this can equally be the result of the actions of some malicious forces, or someone's mistake.
For example, according to Klimenko, a new version of some critically important software, where an error crept in, could have appeared in the system a few days before the failure. But the expert notes that it is too early to draw conclusions: "all this is just an assumption at the moment", which "can be made based on your own observations". And the official cause of the failure will be announced later.
RuNet failures
The global RuNet failure occurred last Tuesday, January 14. The Russian segment of the Network "went down" almost completely: from "Gosuslugi" to banking applications, social networks and messengers, excluding Telegram.
Car sharing also stopped working due to problems in the RuNet. According to users of short-term car rental services, drivers had problems with access to the application, and allegedly even lost control of the car directly while driving. However, car sharing services deny information that the global network failure affects the stopping of a rented car.
The failure was already the second in 2025: on January 6, Russians also faced difficulties when using social networks, search engines, gaming platforms, Google resources, communication operator accounts and banking platforms. Then Roskomnadzor stated that the reason was an accident on the main network of one of the telecom operators.
Major failures of the Russian segment of the Network for various reasons also occurred in the past year 2024, the largest of which occurred at the end of January. Then the Ministry of Digital Development stated that the global fall of sites was associated with problems with DNSSEC - a protocol responsible for the safe redirection of addresses upon request. This is a technology that protects against the substitution by an attacker of a response from a DNS server and uses digital signatures of domain zones. It protects any site from cyberattacks, and the user from going to a fraudulent site instead of the original site. The Coordination Center for .RU/.РФ domains later explained that imperfect software was to blame for the DNS resolution errors of domains hosted in the .RU zone.
Exercises on "disconnection"
It is known that Russia has been conducting annual exercises on "turning off the international Internet" for several years to test, as provided for by the Decree of the Government of the Russian Federation of October 12, 2019. The schedule of exercises is agreed with the Ministry of Digital Development and the FSB, and Roskomnadzor is in charge of them.
During the exercises, together with telecom operators, the effectiveness of the key replacement infrastructure is identified in the event of a deliberate disconnection from the outside of the Russian segment of the Internet and information systems are identified whose operability depends on communication with services, libraries and other resources located in foreign communication networks.
According to Roskomnadzor, the latest such exercises were held in early December 2024. However, such exercises never affected RuNet.
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