Clearly someone at the Kremlin has been badly behaved, because Russia is grounding them with no Internet for the day.
All jokes aside though, the country is reportedly "unplugging" from the world wide web as part of a security exercise.
Images courtesy: Reuters
According to local Russian media, as picked up by ZDNet, the move is part of the country's mandated Digital Economy National Program. This was a law introduced earlier in 2018, and supported by President Vladimir Putin, that looks to ensure Russia's connectivity is self-sufficient. Basically, they want the country's Internet access to be available even if a foreign entity tries to take it down via cyber attack.
The "unplugging" is expected to happen before April 1, and Russia will be using the opportunity to test Runet's resilience. During that window, all local Internet traffic will remain within the country, by routing it through government-controlled points approved by telecom watchdog Roskomnadzor. Yeah, it's probably going to mess with Internet traffic and therefore profits of a lot of companies, but they've all been forced to agree to the testing procedure.
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This is just part of the eventual plan though. Russia apparently intends to completely localise its Internet by 2020, much like China and its "Great Firewall". Using a domain name system (DNS) that's been in development for five years now, it would allow Russians to only connect to sites not liked to foreign computers once they're cut off from the rest of the Internet.
You know, where media, social networks, and other services not controlled by the Russian government are available.
It's not too surprising a move either. As far as the short term goals go, Russia wanting to safeguard itself from hackers makes sense, considering they're known to have one of the most active cyber warfare teams in the world. Of course, they'd want to protect themselves from retaliatory attacks.
As far as their long term goals, Russia has had a strict policy of microscopic control under Vladimir Putin. Controlling their Internet completely is only another step down the road they seemed to be headed.