Putin seeks to cut his people off as Russia hit by massive internet meltdown
Russia was tonight hit by a massive internet meltdown.
Vladimir Putin’s internet domain zone experienced massive failure leaving users unable to access numerous popular websites and applications, including giants like Yandex and Google. It was initially unclear if the failure was entirely domestic or an external attack.
The cause of this disruption was initially identified as a breakdown in DNSSEC, the extension responsible for site authentication in the Russian internet, also known as RuNet. It came as Putin is seeking to isolate the Russian web from the West, limiting the access of his people to outside influences.
There was no advance warning of the chaos but Russia did not initially blame the widespread outage on foreign interference. The e-mayhem lasted at least an hour and a half and covered all 11 time zones in Russia from the Baltic to the Pacific.
Major failures hit Russian mobile networks like MTS and Megafon. Online shopping platforms were also badly hit. Cash registers linked to Russia’s biggest bank Sberbank - which operates the country's largest payments system - failed in supermarkets.
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Queues formed in stores and screens announced: “One of our services is not yet available” and “Loyalty card discounts cannot be applied. "The Internet is broken,” complained users. The Kremlin’s own site was temporarily hit as were Russian government sites.
Several popular sites like Yandex and Google were shut down (social media/e2w)
Social media users complained that the "internet is broken" (social media/e2w)The problems followed a series of regional outages this week widely seen as state interference by Roskomnadzor - Russia’s mass media watchdog - as Putin’s regime seeks to censor the web or limit access at certain times. These drills are linked to a desire to enforce electronic repression at speed in the event of anti-warcor anti-Putin protests. Yet the meltdown seemed to take the authorities by surprise.
Andrey Vorobyov, director of the Domain Coordination Centre, confirmed their dedication to resolving the technical problem. "We are working on a technical problem, I can't talk now," said Vorobyov. The Ministry of Digital Development insisted: “In the near future, access to sites in the .RU zone will be restored. A technical issue has occurred affecting the .RU zone associated with the global DNSSEC infrastructure.”
This relates to the DNS protocol that ensures data integrity and reliability. “Specialists from the Internet Technical Centre and MSK-IX are working to eliminate it…. Restoration work is underway. We will keep you updated on the situation.” Most access was restored by around 9:30pm in Moscow, after almost two hours of failures.
Users in Moscow are experiencing problems with paying with banking applications and accessing the State Services portal, said state news outlet RIA Novosti. Russian web expert Maria Avdeeva said: “Widespread internet disruption in Russia. There was restoration at Yandex, Gosuslug, Sberbank, Ozon, Wildberries, VTB, Alfa-Bank, and Tinkoff Bank. Russia built its isolated internet (.ru) for years. Now, a massive outage shows shutting it down is all too easy.”
Ukrainian official Anton Gerashchenko did not claim responsibility for the meltdown even though in recent days Kyiv has admitted to hacking defence-related operators in Russia. “A large-scale Internet network failure in Russia — many websites in the .ru domain zone stopped opening,” he said. "Banking applications, including Sberbank, are not functioning. Failures are noted in the operation of mobile operators. Reasons for the failure are unclear.”
The Moscow Times citing experts said: “Russian authorities have long warned that they would try to transfer all users in the country to a national DNS server. This is probably what is happening now with a lot of sites in the .ru zone.”
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