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: 4, Touché) by jimbrooking on Monday February 11 2019, @08:21PM (6 children)
No spammers, no DDOS attacke, no hackers from Russian sources? Hope the test lasts, say 25 years.
(Score: 4, Funny) by takyon on Monday February 11 2019, @08:31PM (3 children)
They'll just launch previously scheduled attacks from a nearby country.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1, Redundant) by fustakrakich on Monday February 11 2019, @08:41PM
One CIA to spoof them all... Judging by mass media reports, it's working like a charm.
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 2) by Bot on Monday February 11 2019, @09:28PM
hehe nice thinking, it would be like signing the attack though. So it's probably the Chinese that will experiment a bit knowing that the blame would fall on Russians. At least, that's what Putin wants you to believe.
I suggest giving the final touches to the porn collection you built over time and that rivals the rest of the internet in quality and quantity, downloading all your email, git pulling the projects you need most, getting the full archives of your distro, getting gnunet or other mesh network software, getting server software, an alternative OS like genode or openbsd, and prepare for web 3.0, not world wide anymore.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 2) by zocalo on Monday February 11 2019, @10:04PM
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Monday February 11 2019, @10:26PM
The cyberattack side of the military doesn't have to be offline.
In fact, if the cyberattack side of the military is engaged in a digital pearl harbor attack, then it would be good for the rest of the entire country to be off the net to prevent retaliation attacks.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 2) by legont on Monday February 11 2019, @11:48PM
Very few attacks are coming from Russia. There are numerous live maps. For example, this one https://www.deteque.com/live-threat-map/ [deteque.com]
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 5, Informative) by Knowledge Troll on Monday February 11 2019, @08:53PM (1 child)
It's only been 2 or 3 years since Russia blocked Amazon Web Services when a previous attempt at censorship failed. They wanted content removed from the Internet and cited Russian law. The people with the content moved it to AWS as a work around. Russia blocked AWS to work around the work around.
They discovered a lot of dependence on AWS when infrastructure started failing including banks. The blocks had to be undone because the impact on the public was bad.
They won't have that problem after this do this a few time to shake the bugs out.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by isostatic on Monday February 11 2019, @09:29PM
Parts of AWS IP space was still blocked at the world cup -- couldn't get to a lightsail server I had.
(Score: 1) by anubi on Monday February 11 2019, @09:06PM (2 children)
My fear is the unblockable security upgrade sent in response to some squabble whose purpose is to brick anything that accepts it.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Monday February 11 2019, @09:53PM (1 child)
Bricks are unhackable. Problem solved. :)
(Score: 1) by redneckmother on Tuesday February 12 2019, @03:22AM
Bricks "unhackable"?
"If at first you don't succeed, get a bigger hammer!"
Mas cerveza por favor.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 11 2019, @09:48PM (11 children)
Earlier today this was also up on Slashdot. Many of the comments were really stupid, like wishing that it will be permanently disconnected. Do they not understand that Internet is needed for the population there, so they have a better chance to get information and not what their authorities want to server as "truth". If it would be disconnected, it would be like the Soviet times when the state had their Pravda named newspaper (pravda is the Russian word for truth) and most people would have difficulties to check up facts. Nowadays, if they are permanently disconnected they would be served "truth" (in the way the authorities define truth) thru "Pravda" Intranet, "Pravda" TV, and "Pravda" radio.
Not everybody in Russia is working with spam and ddos. There are real people there too needing full access to information like you and me. Regardless if we look at Russia as a friend or as an enemy, there are arguments for that information should be free.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 11 2019, @09:58PM (3 children)
A lot of the problems with Russia could be solved if Putin (aged 66) retires and he does not have a capable and charismatic successor who can fill his power vacuum, leading to the collapse of United Russia and restoration of democracy.
Punishing Russian citizens for their government or wishing for the internet to be balkanized is just dumb. There are ways to deal with spam and DDoS. CAPTCHA is a bigger nuisance.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Monday February 11 2019, @10:20PM
> fill his power vacuum,
> leading to the collapse of United Russia and restoration of democracy
Sorry, but that's not how these things work, according to every historian who ever lived.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by looorg on Monday February 11 2019, @11:33PM
Whatever makes you believe that things will become better when Putin goes? Why would his handpicked puppet replacement somehow do things differently? They have a system in place, it works for them. Sure it might suck a bit, or much, for the population in general but that is hardly their main concern.
What? Please share your drugs, they seem to be amazing. So Putin goes, his sockpuppet replacement is nowhere to be found and that would somehow bring back democracy (when was there "democracy" last time?) and is Russia collapsing or uniting into the USSR again .. I lost track there somehow. Shouldn't you return to a monarchy then with a tsar? Ahh you lost me. Wow those are some amazing drugs ...
(Score: 1) by redneckmother on Tuesday February 12 2019, @03:28AM
Retire at 66? Doubtful.. look at the 1d10ts that are in Congress, the Executive, various state and local governments, etc in the US!
Why should they retire? They have nothing to look forward to, except screwing everyone around them, and accumulating wealth for their demon spawn.
/sarcasm
Mas cerveza por favor.
(Score: 0, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 11 2019, @10:00PM (2 children)
The deep state has spent the last two years sowing hate against Russia. I'm not surprised that even libertarian nerds are foaming at the mouth to deny that outgroup a right to use the Internet.
(Score: 1, Troll) by Ethanol-fueled on Monday February 11 2019, @10:35PM
Putin had advance knowledge of 9/11 and tried to warn us. The Deep State had advance knowledge of 9/11 and didn't warn us because they were the ones who perpetrated it.
(Score: 0, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 12 2019, @12:01AM
It's because the ruling elites know that it works every single fucking time, and it only leads one place. Peter Jackson’s Cartoon War [truthdig.com]:
(Score: 4, Touché) by Hartree on Monday February 11 2019, @10:25PM (3 children)
There were stupid comments on Slashdot?
In other news, water is wet.
(Score: 3, Funny) by DannyB on Monday February 11 2019, @10:27PM (1 child)
Yes, there were. But we get a higher class of stupid comments here. As you can tell by what you're reading. So be happy.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Hartree on Tuesday February 12 2019, @03:08AM
"But we get a higher class of stupid comments here."
So, we're winning at the special Olympics?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Ethanol-fueled on Monday February 11 2019, @10:40PM
Slashdot has been neocon bullshit for as long as I can remember. Then Rob Malda went to work for the neocon Washington Post.
(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!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 11 2019, @10:59PM
By now they are stockpiling cat's videos in order to achieve the success of the operation.
(Score: 3, Informative) by looorg on Monday February 11 2019, @11:27PM
They really missed an opportunity here. They should do it on the 1st of April instead. The one day you can't tell the motherland news from RT.COM from all the other april fools jokes. This way we would know ... or not ...
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 12 2019, @01:08AM
Is this site hosted in russia?
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Tuesday February 12 2019, @11:02PM
"We want to prove that we can close off Russia from the rest of the Internet when we need to."
This sig for rent.