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Russia considers 'unplugging' from internet
- JackPoach 8y agoIt'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.
- mc32 8y agoExactly. This is something all major powers should do, at least virtually, in the event it actually becomes necessary. The BBC title is a little misleading in that it sort of implied permanency rather than it being a “test of the emergency system”, to borrow a phrase.
- wbl 8y agoOr you could contribute to the global Internet not going down. It has remarkable uptime.
- SketchySeaBeast 8y agoWhat'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 8y agoIf Reddit goes down, it's not a matter of national emergency, but if say, all major news websites do, then you're probably fucked
- SketchySeaBeast 8y ago> but if say, all major news websites do, then you're probably fucked Why? What absolutely vital information did the general populace just lose access to that's not the equivalent to "well my router died"?
- airstrike 8y agoThe stock market alone would plummet from not getting any news
- SketchySeaBeast 8y agoAnd in the case of Russia shutting off the external connections, thus preventing any external news agencies from reporting, the Russian stock market would happily continue on?
- Jeff_Brown 8y agoUnlike the US and Europe, capital in Russia is largely stashed abroad, and the economy not especially dependent on the small amount of trade and information mediated by the domestic stock market. A stock market is kind of an institutional miracle -- people who don't know each other come together in the form of corporations, and then borrow from other people that don't know them. In a place with less trust, such cooperation is less feasible.
- TheOtherHobbes 8y ago"War was declared at..."
- SketchySeaBeast 8y agoAnd what about that news requires internet level transmission? We have SMS, Radio, & TV still. I'll bet the next morning newspaper would do it too.
- dotancohen 8y agoI'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.
- dredmorbius 8y agoAnd a few that you don't but were/.
- SketchySeaBeast 8y agoI wasn't old enough to be on those sites, but I do remember being glued to the TV pretty much the whole morning.
- freeflight 8y agoThe "domestic internet" is part of a collection of infrastructure systems that need to properly work to keep order in place. For a more blatant example take a look at the dependency of US emergency services on private communication companies like Calif. wildfire fighters having their communications disrupted because Verizon throttled their bandwidth. At first sight a mildly interesting anecdote, but in reality, it's a massive flaw in the US's approach to infrastructure. If anybody really wanted to "cyber" the US they would only need to attack the private communication providers, like Verizon, and will not only take down the public spread of information/communication, but also completely disrupt the civilian emergency response forces attempting to react to whatever else the adversary might be attacking with, for an attacker it's a win-win. Sure, the US military has its own hardened communication, but all the rest of the US American society? They will be left out in complete information and communication blackout. [0] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/08/verizon-throttled-fire-departments-unlimited-data-during-calif-wildfire/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/08/verizon-throttle...
- floatboth 8y agoIt's kind of a stupid thing to do. Well, the excuse at least. Only people who don't know what BGP even is would buy the excuse. Any connected fragment of the internet can continue functioning autonomously anyway. The majority of traffic inside any country is already not going outside, and the internal segment would not break if the outside routes suddenly disappeared.
- mschuster91 8y ago> and the internal segment would not break if the outside routes suddenly disappeared. Not when your default nameserver is 8.8.8.8. Or your NTP source is set to the public NTP pools. There is definitely a benefit in doing a "we are isolated" scenario test once in a while to prepare for such incidents...
- floatboth 8y ago8.8.8.8 is anycast, it is announced locally in many places around the world.
- yardstick 8y agoIs there a local instance of it in Russia? What happens when that server can’t reach any upstreams?
- floatboth 8y agoThere is. Only Google can answer the second question with certainty, but I'm 99% sure its upstreams are http://root-servers.org http://root-servers.org
- yardstick 8y agoSo wouldn’t it be reasonable to test what happens when it can’t reach its upstream servers? I assume Russia will need to provide some way of DNS record changes still working. It could be they intercept/replace 8.8.8.8, or they intercept the upstreams, but whatever it is I can see why they would want to test it first. Not that I agree with the ultimate reasons for doing this exercise — mass filtering and surveillance — just speaking to the technical merits of why a test would be done.
- throwaway5752 8y agoRecalls 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 8y agoNow I'm wondering what the cyber warfare equivalent of Sichelschnitt will be - where will be the big blindspots that they are ignoring?
- trhway 8y agospace based internet by SpaceX/Musk.
- SketchySeaBeast 8y ago> SpaceX/Musk I just realized that Elon is missing a lot of cologne opportunities.
- dylan604 8y agoI 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 8y agoI 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"
- tivert 8y ago> 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.
- Shivetya 8y agodon't worry, the US political system is doing similar but under the guise of "fake news" and "campaign finance reform". what doesn't work one way can simply be done another when you convince enough people to be afraid
- mg794613 8y agoWhy is this person down voted so harshly? It's on topic. It's relevant and to my opinion even correct in mentioning this. Russia does it without shame in the open whereas the western (our) countries achieve this by scaring the people enough "they want it themselves". What's so wrong about that?
- Scipio_Afri 8y agoThe US political system absolutely is not doing that.
- api 8y agoNot even close. There is no network layer firewalling. Private platforms have kicked off offensive and BS content mostly to protect their market value to the majority of users.
- opwieurposiu 8y agoPrivate platforms censor to appease the advertisers, not the users.
- ccnafr 8y agoBBC coverage links to ZDNet article: https://www.zdnet.com/article/russia-to-disconnect-from-the-internet-as-part-of-a-planned-test/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/russia-to-disconnect-from-the-...
- cptaj 8y agoThis 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.
- abledon 8y agopeople go to war to gain control over something. If you can do so by censoring ideas, great! That is a lot cheaper than actual war.
- staplers 8y ago.. I'm starting to see a lot of outrageous opinions like this on 'normal' forums like Reddit and HN with people defending this type of authoritarianism. I see the internet trending so extreme to the point it's useless for me. Not sure if others feel the same. Makes me sad to remember the hope I used to feel about its possibilities.
- ecshafer 8y agoI don't believe the gp is defending authoritarianism, at least I hope not. I think they were in an academic sense providing an explanation for why these authoritarian governments behave in that manner.
- api 8y agoFor the past 10-15 years there has been a broad based trend toward authoritarianism. I see it on both the left and the right. Most libertarians seem to have become either fascists or authoritarian socialists. What you see in forums reflects this larger trend. It also seems to be a global trend that spans cultures, nations, religions, etc. I am not sure exactly why this is happening, but my guess would be a lot of extreme change very fast driven by technology. Most people are intimidated by rapid change. The tendency is to run to the big alpha and close ranks with your own tribe. Your brain stem still thinks you are a hunter gatherer in the African savannah.
- rjf72 8y agoAny 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 8y ago>> 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 8y agoTrue, for blocking outgoing AND incoming connections. Everyone in western media assumes the primary motivation is outgoing connections / censorship.
- laumars 8y agoMaybe 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.
- ccnafr 8y agoSource, Russian: https://www.rbc.ru/technology_and_media/08/02/2019/5c5c51069a7947bef4503927 https://www.rbc.ru/technology_and_media/08/02/2019/5c5c51069...
- nakedrobot2 8y agoThey are testing this because they want the power to release an unspeakable virus / botnet which can destroy the whole internet / take down major infrastructure. Doing so would of course require disconnecting from the internet first.
- ghostbrainalpha 8y ago1) Don't post conspiracy theories with nothing to back it up like its real information. 2) You don't need a virus to take down the internet. A fairly limited missile strike could take out enough of the backbone to take almost everything down. 3) This is a real danger all first world countries are aware of and prepare for or under-prepare for. 4) If World War 3 starts when China takes down Netflix.... our generation will have been a complete failure.
- spdionis 8y agoI mean, just destroy a couple of AWS datacenters and half of the internet dies immediately.
- BerislavLopac 8y ago> A fairly limited missile strike could take out enough of the backbone to take almost everything down. Which is quite ironic -- if true -- considering the Internet was originally designed to be able to withstand the nuclear war.
- jazzyjackson 8y agoFor the critics, Bruce Schneier wrote about the massive east coast DDoS attacks occurring in 2016, says that it looks like probing, pentesting, checking for response measures. "Someone Is Learning How to Take Down the Internet" https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2016/09/someone_is_lear.html https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2016/09/someone_is_le...
- davidhyde 8y agoInteresting that they chose April fools day to test this.
- Angostura 8y agoI 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
- reaperducer 8y agoI wonder if this was why the Russians demanded that Apple put iCloud servers there. https://appleinsider.com/articles/15/09/11/apple-begins-storing-russian-icloud-data-within-country-complying-with-new-law---report https://appleinsider.com/articles/15/09/11/apple-begins-stor...
- konart 8y agoWe 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.
- freewizard 8y agoSurprising 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-predicts-internet-split-china.html https://www.cnbc.com/2018/09/20/eric-schmidt-ex-google-ceo-p... [2] https://www.cnbc.com/2019/02/04/the-splinternet-an-internet-half-owned-by-china-and-the-us.html https://www.cnbc.com/2019/02/04/the-splinternet-an-internet-...
- tivert 8y ago> 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.
- sonnyblarney 8y agoEven 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 ...
- xkgihu7r 8y agoWhat a clickbaity title. Why not include more info? Russia considers 'unplugging' from internet briefly as part of a test
- agumonkey 8y agowe'll always have ham radio
- jazzyjackson 8y agoA 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 8y agoshould I read about faraday cage forest design ?
- gandhium 8y agoSoviets try to jam couple of short-wave stations: BBC, Voice of America and Deutsche Welle (at least). It _almost_ worked, you were able to hear them (although with some distortion) but i think that jamming will definitely break any data connections. I think even 300bps will not work with that level of noise.
- dmazin 8y agoI 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.
- 1024core 8y agoWhy wouldn't they? They've shown that it can be weaponized, and now are afraid of being on the receiving end.
- freeflight 8y agoThey'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-operation-social-networks https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2011/mar/17/us-spy-op...
- umvi 8y agoSatellite 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 8y ago> 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.
- tonyedgecombe 8y agoAt least the political subs on Reddit will be quieter for a day or two.
- gandhium 8y agoNope. Those Kremlin trolls are already on VPNs pretending to be 'real westerners'.
- quantuminsert 8y agohas everyone forgotten what we learned from the Snowden leaks? NSA has QUANTUMINSERT plus a dozen other QUANTUM* codeword programs to attack anyone connected to the Internet by using MITM attacks to impersonate any Internet endpoint and deliver tailored exploits to any client. the way QUANTUM works is by delivering the impersonated connected to the client faster than the real server can send the response. i have been surprised by the lack of interest from us tech nerds into figuring out just how is that possible on a technical level of Internet infrastructure? how can NSA insert itself so its server can deliver spoofed packets faster than the real server? all Russia is doing here is protecting itself from QUANTUM style attacks on a total scale, by funneling all foreign traffic through infrastructure choke points which is controls. at the very least, this would give Russia the capability to detect QUANTUM attacks. and there is no question whether Russia needs this, because we have already seen evidence of QUANTUM attacks. recall the recent indictment of the dozen GRU officers for their alleged hacking the DNC? in the indictment it lists as evidence that DOJ knows certain Google searches for English translations performed by GRU officers, which later ended up used in the texts and names of accountsed used by GRU. nobody asked "wowie, how did NSA penetrate GRU so deeply to be able to hack their HQ network to then watch what they typed into web pages and emails?" QUANTUM is how. then there was the indictment of the North Korean who allegedly launched on of the bigger WannaCry variants and his indictment shows DOJ was reading his Yandex emails. how did NSA gain access to Yandex in the first place? can you imagine if Russia had breached Gmail and was bulk scanning everybody's emails? so Russia cannot just do nothing. it has to protect its own cyber sovereignty from NSA. NSA already does the same thing here to protect itself and to give itself enhanced capabilities. truly free speech is more censored here in America than in Russia, so worry about your own dwindling 1A rights before you tut-tut about Russian's right to say mean words about Putin and criticize their govt for not increasing the acceleration of importing SJW degeneracy into Russia from America.
- chewz 8y agoMaybe this drill is a preparation for democratic election free from foreign influence?
- lightgreen 8y agoBBC 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.