In today's exploration of cyber security tech news.
The war in Ukraine has caused over 250 companies to leave Russia, Apple, Intel, Nvidia have
all made their exit - but could Russia's access to the internet itself be the next technological
casualty of Putin's invasion?
And would Russia being banned from the internet even be a good thing?
The answer, isn't quite what you might think.
Effectively banning Russia from the internet, is exactly what Ukraine wants, a few days
ago their vice prime minister published an open letter to ICANN.
ICANN is the group responsible for assigning ip addresses and managing the domain name
system - ICANN is a pretty important organisation when it comes to maintaining the internet
- if you wanted to kick an entire country off from the web, these are the first guys
you'd ask.
Ukraine had multiple demands of them 1, "revoke Russian domains names, like .ru", 2, "revoke
SSL certificates" - these are used to protect and validate internet traffic - and 3, "shut
down DNS root servers based in Russia" - these things are like massive address books which
essentially map domain names to ip addresses.
And as you can imagine, if these requests were actually granted it would potentially
be Armageddon for Russia's internet - Russian websites would effectively stop working, which
is exactly what Ukraine understandably wants.
But, it's not quite that simple.
ICANN published an open letter of their own, essentially saying, ICANNOT do this.
Firstly, some of Ukraine's demands just don't take into account the way the internet works,
ICANN has nothing to do with issuing Russian SSL certificates, and those DNS root servers
are run by independent organisations.
But it's more interesting to consider what ICANN could do, they could theoretically mess
with those Russian domains (.ru and things like that), however that would come with a
whole host its own problems.
You see - ICANN - the guys who manage ip address allocation and DNS for the whole internet,
is only really able to exist because it's politically neutral, if they start sanctioning
countries, cutting them off from the web - then it could cause the whole internet to divide
into what's called a "splinternet" - in other words different countries might cynically
develop their own isolated versions of the internet, which would kind of ruin the point
of an internet.
It would essentially be the end of the web as we know it.
But maybe there is a way to boot Russia off the interwebs without the help of ICANN.
If ICANN is like the internet's metaphorical address book, then maybe you could instead
target the roads that lead to those addresses.
And, one company has done just that, "Cogent communications" - a company you've probably
never even heard of has in the last day or two pulled the plug on their Russian customers.
This company is like an internet service provider for internet service providers - as in, you
don't pay them a monthly fee, but your ISP pays cogent communications for access to their
vast network of 100 thousand miles of underground and undersea cables - in fact 25% of all internet
traffic runs through cables owned by this company.
So for these guys to be cutting Russia's access, it's a big deal.
One of cogent's biggest customers is - or should I say was - Russia's largest telecom's
provider "Rostelecom" - which is now going to have to make alternative arrangements.
But make no mistake, this isn't going to cut Russia off from the internet completely - however
it will reduce the total bandwidth available to Russians which could lead to slower internet
speeds.
And, if more internet backbone companies follow Cogent's lead, then Russia will become increasingly
isolated from the internet.
But even if it was possible to completely banish Russia from the internet, would it
be a good idea to punish Russia with that?
Imo, it'd be a terribly awful dangerously bad idea, and would probably just play into
the hands of Putin, why?
Well, cutting off internet access to a population only makes it easier for a government to control
the flow of information - in fact simply 'turning off the internet' is tool commonly used by
authoritarian regimes in times of unrest, because it makes it harder for ordinary people
to voice their dissent of the government.
For example, during the protests in Kazakhstan earlier this year, the regime blocked internet
access until the protests were over.
The same tactic was used last year following a military coup in Myanmar, and there's dozens
of other examples - is it a coincidence that the most oppressed populous on the planet
happens to be the one with de facto no internet access?
And even if Russia was somehow disconnected from the rest of the world, some kind of internet
would still exist in Russia - it's called "Runet" and it's been built by the Russian
government over the past few years.
Runet would enable an intranet within Russia but limited to only Russian websites, effectively
preventing ordinary Russians from accessing any website not approved by Russia's regime.
So, preventing Russians from accessing the web would create an echo chamber for over
140 million people where only Putin approved voices are allowed to speak - in other words,
a bad idea.
Also, I don't think pulling the plug on Russia would even achieve the intended aims - cogent
communications explains they've left Russia because they don't want their network to be
used for "outbound cyber attacks or disinformation."
- which is understandable!
A lot of cyber attacks do come from Russia - and disinformation is a problem - but, armed
with the resources of a nation state, it wouldn't be difficult for Russia to carry out cyber
attacks from a foreign country - so carving Russia out from the internet would only really
affect ordinary people.
However, it's unlikely Russia will be banned, or cut off in some way from the wider internet.
By its very nature, the internet is decentralised, so no one person or company can just shut
the door to an entire country.
However, watch this space, unlikely things happen - as we've learnt over the past couple
of years.
This is a topic I really want to hear your guys' opinions on, do you agree with me that
punishing Russia by cutting them of from the internet would be a bad idea?
Or do you think they deserve more isolation for what they've done to Ukraine?
Let's get a discussion going in the comments.
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