
Russia considers 'unplugging' from internet - _void
https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-47198426
======
cptaj
This has nothing to do with cyber warfare. Its just pushing the envelope
towards full censorship of the internet.

They get the systems in place, they run drills to get the population used to
the idea, then they close specific sectors, then they close everything and
have special "open sectors" and then you're fucked.

Don't fall for it.

~~~
JackPoach
First, you overestimate western media influence on Russian population, which
is essentially so minor you can completely disregard it. Even domestically
fewer and fewer Americans(Brits) take American or British media seriously.

Second, many governments (not just Russian one) have been very effective at
censorship without disconnecting from the Internet. China is the only county
that does both censorship and 'the Great Firewall'. Saudi Arabia is perfectly
capable of very strict censorship without doing what China did to the very
same extent. AFAIK Facebook, YouTube, Twitter are all accessible in KSA and
are used by millions of Saudis on a daily basis.

~~~
ernst_klim
>you overestimate western media influence on Russian population

They don't want to turn off western media, they want to turn off people like
Navalny and thousands of government critics who use facebook, telegram and
youtube, plus Russian anti-gove media located abroad for the safety reasons,
like Meduza.

They've already tried to block telegram and failed, now they are going a more
radical way.

------
tivert
> The test is also expected to involve ISPs demonstrating that they can direct
> data to government-controlled routing points. These will filter traffic so
> that data sent between Russians reaches its destination, but any destined
> for foreign computers is discarded.

> Eventually the Russian government wants all domestic traffic to pass through
> these routing points. This is believed to be part of an effort to set up a
> mass censorship system akin to that seen in China, which tries to scrub out
> prohibited traffic.

The internet is fragmenting.

~~~
throwaway415415
There is no way they can afford to fragment the internet. They need open
source libraries, they need access to information, they need access to
education, etc. If they do that they will gp backward economically.

~~~
biesnecker
I wish I believed this as strongly as you do. The Chinese internet is isolated
in a lot of very meaningful ways and the Chinese economy is not going
backwards. There's probably a drag but it's not significant enough to stall
progress.

You can unfortunately retain a lot of the utility of the internet while
simultaneously sucking out the ability for it to be effectively used for
political activity if you're willing to build the infrastructure required.

~~~
Upvoter33
"There's probably a drag but it's not significant enough to stall progress."

I think it's rather the opposite. Why do you think tencent, alibaba, etc.,
exist in China, instead of the US alternatives? It's simply because there was
a wall in place. Honestly, I'm not sure why more large countries aren't doing
this - it's an easy way to build your own digital industry up.

~~~
lainga
That's the thing - I'm not sure Russia can produce their own competent
tencent, alibaba, and so forth. I wonder if they're going to wall off their
section of the Internet, then realise it's painful and open themselves up to
Chinese companies.

It would be wise for someone in the Russian government to say "You will end up
shining the shoes of the Chinese!" _a la_ Italo Balbo at this point.

~~~
Andrex
Services don't have to be competent to be profitable.

In addition, I'm sure there's enough tech skill and manpower in Russia to
create most any web service given enough incentive.

------
JackPoach
It's a smart thing to do (to have such a plan) even if no cyberwar ever takes
place. There are so many possible scenarios of what could go wrong and having
autonomous but functioning internet is absolutely necessary.

~~~
SketchySeaBeast
What's the value in protecting the domestic internet from a cyber attack?
Critical national information services absolutely, but if Reddit goes down,
it's not a matter of national emergency. The conceit COULD be for
disseminating information, but a text message system would make more sense in
that regards, plus good old fashioned TV and Radio.

~~~
airstrike
If Reddit goes down, it's not a matter of national emergency, but if say, all
major news websites do, then you're probably fucked

~~~
dotancohen
I'm old enough to remember this happening 17 and a half years ago.

Two airplanes had crashed into the Twin Towers in New York, and word starting
coming in of another plane crashing into the Pentagon building. Talk of
terrorism spread, and American airspace was shut down, and another airplane
crash was reported. All the news websites were down, except for Chips & Dips,
which had disabled images and was mostly text anyway.

Actually, the site had already changed its name by then. I sometimes see some
usernames here that I remember from there.

~~~
SketchySeaBeast
I wasn't old enough to be on those sites, but I do remember being glued to the
TV pretty much the whole morning.

------
rjf72
Any sources on the quote in the article, _" Eventually the Russian government
wants all domestic traffic to pass through these routing points. This is
believed to be part of an effort to set up a mass censorship system akin to
that seen in China, which tries to scrub out prohibited traffic."_ ? I
searched and all I came up with was several sites saying the exact same thing,
literally word for word, or otherwise saying so without any sort of source or
rationale behind it.

This seems like a very logical test for all countries to carry out. Certainly
not enough to suggest it's some sort of precursor to Chinese level censorship
if this action is all that's based on.

~~~
tivert
>> Eventually the Russian government wants all domestic traffic to pass
through these [government-controlled] routing points.

> Certainly not enough to suggest it's some sort of precursor to Chinese level
> censorship if this action is all that's based on.

That technical capability _is_ an essential precursor to building a clone of
the great firewall. After that, the censorship is just a matter of adding
firewall rules.

~~~
equalunique
True, for blocking outgoing AND incoming connections.

Everyone in western media assumes the primary motivation is outgoing
connections / censorship.

~~~
laumars
Maybe because hacking an average Russian citizen's PC nets you no benefits (I
mean aside the usual low-level cybor crime that already happens) however
controlling the media that person accesses then gives you a great deal of
domestic power.

------
Angostura
I would be very tempting to muck about with them such that when they finish
their test and attempt to plug in again nothing actually happens and there’s
still no traffic flowing

------
lightgreen
BBC says in bold:

> Russia is considering whether to disconnect from the global internet
> briefly, as part of a test of its cyber-defences.

Sounds scary. But than clarifies:

> The test will mean data passing between Russian citizens and organisations
> stays inside the nation rather than being routed internationally.

Which contradicts the previous sentence: Russia is not planning to disconnect
from the global internet briefly.

I so disappointed at BBC for spreading misinformation.

------
sonnyblarney
Even though they are doing it for all the wrong reasons, I suggest this is
probably going to be a good exercise for the internet, because these things
could happen, and we have no idea what the fallout will be.

Randomly downing a few servers is often seen as good practice in ops to test
for resiliency, and see how well things hold up as they are supposed to.

We will all learn a lot from it.

Of course it won't be good for Russians in the long run ...

------
dmazin
I don't have a source handy but they tried this a few years ago -- the same
exact thing. They failed because Russia has so many connections to the net.
Let's hope they fail again.

------
freewizard
Surprising it's Russia, not China, doing this first, as senior ex-Googlers
like Eric Schmidt and Kaifu Lee brought up this "two internet" thing [1] [2]

[1] [https://www.cnbc.com/2018/09/20/eric-schmidt-ex-google-
ceo-p...](https://www.cnbc.com/2018/09/20/eric-schmidt-ex-google-ceo-predicts-
internet-split-china.html) [2] [https://www.cnbc.com/2019/02/04/the-
splinternet-an-internet-...](https://www.cnbc.com/2019/02/04/the-splinternet-
an-internet-half-owned-by-china-and-the-us.html)

~~~
tivert
> Surprising it's Russia, not China, doing this first

China _already did_ do this first. All their internet traffic already passes
through government controlled choke points, and their citizens primarily use
domestic Chinese-only systems, at least partially because foreign competitors
are blocked. The things Russia is testing here are some basic capabilities of
a great-firewall type system.

------
throwaway5752
Recalls the Maginot line, in the case of cyber warfare. How man taps are
there? Perhaps more sensible for managing the information presented to their
own population in emergencies.

~~~
SketchySeaBeast
Now I'm wondering what the cyber warfare equivalent of Sichelschnitt will be -
where will be the big blindspots that they are ignoring?

~~~
trhway
space based internet by SpaceX/Musk.

~~~
dylan604
I was wondering the same thing about satellite based internet, but was
thinking the old school versions rather than a SpaceX solution. I have not
read up on any of the SpaceX plans or what their coverage would look like (US
focused, global, etc).

The one thing that I would be somewhat concerned with trying to operate like
this would be simple radio games. Would digital uplink transmissions be easily
traceable? Not knowing the size of antenna required, how portable would it be?
How much effort would it be for the uplink to be detected, triangulated, and
goon squad dispatched?

~~~
jazzyjackson
I would obfuscate through a physical relay. Let them find the upload antenna,
but without any idea where the signal originated. Or perhaps raise the cost of
triangulation through spam radio, upload antennae broadcasting garbage.

But if this is in war, Russia can just stand more radars up and watch the
packet radio bandwidth plummet, see
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duga_radar](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duga_radar)
:

"extremely powerful ... 10 MW ... broadcast in the shortwave radio bands ...
appeared without warning, sounding like a sharp, repetitive tapping noise at
10 Hz ... the Russian Woodpecker. The random frequency hops disrupted
legitimate broadcasts, amateur radio operations, oceanic commercial aviation
communications, utility transmissions, and resulted in thousands of complaints
by many countries worldwide. The signal became such a nuisance that some
receivers such as amateur radios and televisions actually began including
'Woodpecker Blankers' in their circuit designs in an effort to filter out the
interference"

------
reaperducer
I wonder if this was why the Russians demanded that Apple put iCloud servers
there.

[https://appleinsider.com/articles/15/09/11/apple-begins-
stor...](https://appleinsider.com/articles/15/09/11/apple-begins-storing-
russian-icloud-data-within-country-complying-with-new-law---report)

~~~
konart
We have law from a few years ago that demands that all services that operate
users' personal data to store it in Russia. It's more about having the power
to access the data if needed without asking a service to provide the data
first. Just come and grab it.

------
ccnafr
BBC coverage links to ZDNet article: [https://www.zdnet.com/article/russia-to-
disconnect-from-the-...](https://www.zdnet.com/article/russia-to-disconnect-
from-the-internet-as-part-of-a-planned-test/)

------
umvi
Satellite internet might be a nice way to escape censorship, though it's
fairly easy for the government to detect if you are transmitting stuff at the
sky...

~~~
jacquesm
> though it's fairly easy for the government to detect if you are transmitting
> stuff at the sky...

Not with a steered beam. Unless another satellite is riding shotgun on the one
you are aiming at you will need some manner to receive the signal directly in
order to triangulate. That's easy when the transmitter is non-directional but
very hard when the direction is 'up' and the beam is focused and aimed at a
specific satellite. You'll still get quite a bit of spread but you will need
multiple simultaneous receptions in order to be able to pinpoint the origin of
the transmitter.

------
davidhyde
Interesting that they chose April fools day to test this.

~~~
laumars
> Interesting that they chose April fools day to test this.

They didn't:

> The test is due to happen before 1 April but no exact date has been set.

~~~
davidhyde
Ah, I see

------
chewz
Maybe this drill is a preparation for democratic election free from foreign
influence?

------
tonyedgecombe
At least the political subs on Reddit will be quieter for a day or two.

------
agumonkey
we'll always have ham radio

~~~
jazzyjackson
A good xkcd question might be, how much power does it take to jam all
frequencies with radio noise, per acre ?

Maybe you will have to transport yourself out to the tundra to get clear
signal.

~~~
agumonkey
should I read about faraday cage forest design ?

------
1024core
Why wouldn't they? They've shown that it can be weaponized, and now are afraid
of being on the receiving end.

~~~
freeflight
They've been on the "receiving end" of it for years already, contrary to
popular perceptions the Russians didn't really invent any of this [0].

[0] [https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2011/mar/17/us-spy-
op...](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2011/mar/17/us-spy-operation-
social-networks)

