Russia: Universal disconnection from the Internet is being prepared

The Russian authorities and major Internet service providers intend to untie the country from the internet. Universal disconnection from the internet will be part of a planned experiment, according to the Russian news agency RosBiznesKonsalting (RBK).

The reason for universal decoupling is to gather information and give feedback on amendments to a proposed law introduced in the Russian Parliament in December of 2018.

The draft law allows Russian Internet distributors to secure the independence of the Russian web site (Runet) in case of a foreign attack to disconnect the country from the rest of the internet.

Local Internet

In addition, Russian telecommunications companies will have to install the appropriate "technical means" to redirect all Russian Internet traffic to exchange points approved or operated by Roskomnazor, Russia's largest broadcaster.

Roskomnazor will inspect the traffic and block the prohibited content, in addition to ensuring that the traffic between Russian users will remain inside the country and that it will not be transported through servers from abroad, from where it could be obstructed.

The date for the test has not yet been revealed but should be made before April 1 before the deadline for submitting amendments to the forthcoming law known as the Digital Economy National Program.

The test disconnection experiment was agreed at a meeting of the Information Security Working Group at the end of January. Natalya Kaspersky, director of the Russian company InfoWatch and co-founder of Kaspersky Lab, is chairing the group, which includes executives from major Russian telcos such as MegaFon, Beeline, MTS, RosTelecom and others.

The RBK Reported that all internet service providers have agreed to the objectives of the forthcoming bill but disagreed with their technical implementation because they believe it will cause great upheaval in the Russian Internet traffic. Trial disconnection would provide Internet service providers with data on how to react to their networks.

Finanz.ru also reported that local Internet Mail.ru and Yandex.ru also support trial disconnection.

The Russian government has been working on this project for years. 2017, Russian officials said they intend to roll 95% of total Internet traffic to local levels up to 2020.

The authorities have even created a local DNS (Domain Name System) system that tested 2014 for the first time, the second test was the 2018 and appears to be an important component of Runet when ISPs plan to untie the country from the rest of the world.

The proposed law, which was fully endorsed by the President Putin, and is expected to pass, as the Russian government has agreed to cover the costs of ISPs modifying their infrastructure to install new servers redirecting traffic to Roskomnazor.