The latest Internet failures in Russia on February 27, related to access to Telegram, WhatsApp, YouTube, VKontakte, Gosuslugi and other resources, may be related to the March presidential elections. Since the Russian special services on the eve of this political event are fighting against possible vulnerabilities of the Internet in the country and eliminating them.
Andrey Svintsov, Deputy Chairman of the State Duma Committee on Information Policy, Information Technology and Communications, said this in an interview with Gazeta.Ru. According to him, the fact that on February 27, blocked and prohibited sites and applications became available in Russia to some Russians without a VPN can be associated with the same work. This is how developments are tested against vulnerabilities that may be associated with these resources.
These failures are related to the fact that in anticipation of the presidential elections, our special services are checking the operability of all systems inside Russia related to the infrastructure of Internet operability and cybersecurity. In the process of checks, which, as a rule, go through stress tests, that is, some kind of cyberattacks that our specialists make, vulnerabilities are sought, therefore, for a short time, a number of blocked resources can be removed from blocking to test test solutions. In the coming hours, maximum days, all vulnerabilities that were found during training will be eliminated. Again, prohibited sites, prohibited resources, prohibited social networks will be restricted in access, and everything will be in accordance with the current law. There is nothing to be surprised at here. This is the usual work of special services that are responsible for cybersecurity and for the operability, for maintaining the infrastructure of all our IT resources.
Svintsov noted that at the same time, unblocking a number of social networks in Russia is not being discussed, since in the country "everyone is gradually forgetting what Western social networks are".
As for lifting the blockages, no, such issues are not being discussed yet. Moreover, there is no such need. Most of our citizens have switched to domestic resources, and everyone is gradually forgetting what Western social networks are. Gradually, those resources that are blocked are also going out of fashion, and our citizens are switching to other resources: either foreign unblocked ones, or domestic ones.
This is not the first case since the beginning of the year when Russia has problems with the Network. So, on January 30, there was a global failure of the RuNet - dozens of sites "went down" from the Yandex ecosystem to "Gosuslugi".
After the Ministry of Digital Development explained that access to sites in the RU/RF zone occurred due to the imperfection of the software, and the technical problems associated with DNSSEC were eliminated. And on February 18, Telegram "fell off" for a while for Russians and users around the world. According to unofficial data, the problem with the messenger was due to the fact that Telegram began preparing to launch new functions.
It is worth noting that in just a day, on March 1, Russia may block both VPN services and sites that advertise them. Roskomnadzor recalls the ban on popularizing circumvention services, which is already in effect in the country.
Read materials on the topic:
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