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Russia plans to 'unplug' from internet
Russia is planning to briefly disconnect from the internet as part of planning for a future cyber-war. The test will mean data passing between Russian citizens and organisations stays inside the nation rather than being routed internationally.
A law mandating technical changes needed to operate independently was introduced to Russia's parliament last year.
The test is due to happen before 1 April but no exact date has been set.
The draft law, called the Digital Economy National Program, requires Russia's ISPs to ensure that it can operate in the event of foreign powers acting to isolate the country online.
[...] 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.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by black6host on Monday February 11 2019, @09:52PM (6 children)
Ok,
Just take the idea on it's own. Forget who's doing it. It's not a bad idea. I hope we're doing, or thinking of doing, the same here (US). I'd certainly be wary of routing all traffic through government routing points but even that makes sense if you think you've been compromised and don't want data sent outside the country to bad actors.
Do any think it wouldn't be possible for some outside group, government sponsored or otherwise, to at least try and disrupt communications within a given country? May be a Herculean task but I'd still like to be prepared. Besides, I don't think it would be farfetched to think that a country that is preparing itself from that kind of attack hasn't carefully considered how it could be done...
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 11 2019, @09:58PM (1 child)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_kill_switch [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 12 2019, @04:52PM
http://www.turnofftheinternet.com/ [turnofftheinternet.com]
(Score: 2) by nobu_the_bard on Monday February 11 2019, @10:18PM
The next time a Comcast hub or something goes down, that should be the email/tweet/etc they send. "Just doing an unscheduled internet outage test to simulate a cyberwar. No nuclear missiles that we can detect have been launched, but rest assured if we can't even detect them, it'll probably be quick and painless. Thank you for your patience!"
(Score: 2) by zocalo on Monday February 11 2019, @10:23PM (2 children)
Anything's possible but, hypothetical Internet kill switches aside, I think you're going to need to come up with some thing pretty special, like a 0-day in the BGP protocol or against one of the major backbone hardware vendors, to knock one of the more connected nations off-line, if only because of the level of redundancy between Tier 1 / Tier 2 providers and international interconnects those countries tend to have. You might, through concerted effort and maybe a multi-pronged attack, be able to destablise things enough to achieve an effective equivalent though.
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
(Score: 3, Informative) by black6host on Monday February 11 2019, @10:55PM (1 child)
I agree that it would take something special. Really, if you think about it, the Russians can take what they learn, shore up things they consider critical, and hopefully learn more to be able to better protect themselves in the future. It will leave them in a better position than when they started, to be sure. There is no magic bullet, particularly because it's a moving target. Taking the threat seriously, even if it can't be fully realized, is not bad policy.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by zocalo on Tuesday February 12 2019, @08:44AM
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!