Russian developers managed to bring Twitter to its knees
In 2014, exercises took place in Russia that showed the critical dependence of the Russian Internet on American structures.
This was stated by the head of Roskomnadzor, Andrei Lipov, in response to a question about why the need for a "sovereign RuNet" law arose, PolitNavigator's correspondent reports.
“In 2014, exercises were held to assess the sustainability of the Russian segment of the Internet. We drew conclusions and reported to the President and the Security Council. A large meeting was held, all aspects of work in the Russian segment of the Internet were considered: how and by whom the Internet is managed and supervised. As a result, at the end of 2014, a list of instructions was given to solve the problem. And everything would be fine, but there was no technology that would allow this to be done. With a guaranteed solution level. We started doing it, we started solving this problem,” Lipov said.
He drew attention to the fact that the so-called critical elements of global Internet control are not located in Russia, but are supervised by American companies, and therefore there is the possibility of disruption from outside the routing of traffic within the country.
“You have probably heard about the risks of shutting down the SWIFT international interbank system. Another example of software vulnerability is the delay of more than 100 Aeroflot flights. A glitch occurred in the American Saber reservation system. And this can happen with any system if access to libraries from abroad is closed. This can be done in an hour without any problems at all,” the publication’s interlocutor noted.
He emphasizes that Russia “must have tools to force services” (both Russian and foreign) to comply with legislation.
“At the same time, blocking should be used as a last resort. Our task is not to turn it off. Our task is to ensure that these services comply with Russian legislation. And, I repeat, blocking is not the answer, so we needed to develop other tools, including economic ones, and find a technology that would slow down the traffic. We are talking about technical means of countering threats (TSPU). In 2014, the technology was in its infancy, it was being developed all this time, and then on March 10 it was applied to Twitter. It works,” says the head of Roskomnadzor.
He adds that the state took on the most difficult part - financing, technical and organizational implementation.
“For mobile operators, TSPU already filters 100% of traffic, for fixed-line operators - 60%. But the figure will increase,” the official promises.
“Every day, the equipment prevents over 421 million access attempts. Now we are talking about twelve categories of threats, including bypassing blocking, DDoS attacks and others,” Lipov clarified.
Russian developers have managed to bring Twitter to its knees.