The world is once again waiting for Russia’s next act.
Does it disconnect itself from the global internet?
In the world speculate (switch to another service)that Russia would have the desire and readiness to do so already this week or next. Many online services have ceased operations in Russia, and the country may be entering a state of war.
What is it about? We sought answers from four experts.
1) How awkward would Russia be to disconnect from the internet?
Shedding would be a surprisingly simple and quick trick.
– Not impossible at all.
That’s what the Doctor of Military Sciences, Major Juha Kukkola The Defense Forces. He has studied the construction of the internal Internet in Russia.
The trick would be done as shown in this graphic:
Internet traffic would be cut off at hubs, ie in the computer rooms of service providers selling online subscriptions to consumers.
They are equipped with physical monitoring equipment, which is connected to the central control room of the state agency Roskomnadzor, which controls the means of communication. The law on the installation of equipment came into force in 2020.
Roskomnadzor can cut off traffic whenever and how you want. It can even disconnect from Finnish .fi-terminated servers or all foreign servers.
The keys are through Roskomnadzor, the president Vladimir Putin in the hands of the administration.
– We easily think of the internet as a virtual world floating in the cloud, but in the end it is just copper and fibers. Who controls them, controls access to the Internet, sums up a professor at the University of Surrey in the UK, a cyber expert Alan Woodward.
2) Can this happen?
What would be left would be a kind of big intranet for a big job.
There is already a name for the Russian internal Internet: Runet. The official term is more solemn: Russia’s national internet segment.
The idea is strange in a global world. Russia is a large and central country, not a corner piece like North Korea. Can this really happen?
Oh, and there are many signs that Russia is preparing for “online self-sufficiency.”
It’s like a “big backup.” The data is either intended to be protected from cyber-attacks, as the official explanation goes, or to be recovered in Russia in the event that the country actually disconnects from the Internet.
It is also related to the fact that in recent years, large data centers have been built in Russia, where all Russian Internet traffic has been stored for a limited time, starting with everyday cat videos.
This is an opportunity to retrieve anything from the material afterwards.
But whether this really means wanting to disconnect is a mystery.
“It’s impossible to know,” Woodward says.
Russia tested the disconnection in 2019 and reported that the test was successful.
– Testing is a fact. But no one knows how the test really worked, he continues.
The different thing is how seamless the system controlled by Roskomnadzor really is.
– Have the required controls actually been installed by the service providers and are they working in practice? Russia has a tradition of telling the authorities something other than what has actually been done, Kukkola says.
3) How would the disconnection affect Russia?
All access to foreign data would be cut off.
Therefore, experts interviewed by consider Russia’s disengagement unlikely.
– It would be even more shooting on your own than now. Western news that would be perceived as harmful would be out of sight, but business and the work of coders would become impossible, says research director of security company F-Secure Mikko Hyppönen.
Russia is probably only halfway to real self-sufficiency. Its target years have only been mentioned for 2024-2026.
– Everything that’s been built is in progress. The target years are also ideals, and no one has directly believed in them, Kukkola says.
Woodward is not as pessimistic.
– Russia produces more food and fuel than it consumes, and they want to make sure the internet works even if they are isolated. There have been preparations for this since 2014, and I think they are quite ready for it.
The land of mathematicians is lagging behind.
Hands are bound by dependence on Western technology. Russia is a land of mathematicians, engineers, and coders, but its routers, processors, and software are largely Western.
Russian software should be used by the public administration, but Western ones are often used. TSMC, the world’s leading processor manufacturer, stopped producing and exporting Russian Elbrus and Baikal processors from Taiwan to Russia immediately after the start of the war.
Without imports and upgrades from the West, software and hardware would slowly rot. The land of mathematicians is lagging behind.
– Russia is full of universities and coders, but has taken its expertise to the world incomprehensibly badly. It is a blessing in this situation, Hyppönen says.
4) Could Russian citizens circumvent the restrictions?
No barrier is seamless.
But accessing the internet past Roskomnadzor’s lock would require an effort that few would probably be willing to do.
Near the border, foreign internet could be accessed via mobile networks.
A founder of Tesla could be organized in the country Elon Muskin Starlink satellite internet connections also provided to Ukraine, unless Russia decides to disrupt the satellites.
Along the phone lines one could call foreign modems in the style of the 1980s.
But only a fraction of the population of a country of 140 million people would like, know or be able to reach such means. The overwhelming majority would depend on the people, or Runet.
– If Russia ends up disconnecting extensively, it is likely that it will cut them all off. Otherwise, there will be forced detours, Kukkola says.
VPN rotation, ie masking your own machine in another country, will not help if all foreign traffic is interrupted. The same is true of the anonymous Tor network.
5) How would shedding affect the rest of the world?
The practical consequences elsewhere would be quite small.
The biggest consequence would be that access to information in Russia would be cut off. Data located in Russia would remain separate from the Western Seal, and data available to the West would become obsolete hour by hour.
Russia is not a hub for data traffic but bypassable. There is little critical Western data in the country that threatened to be left behind the “digital iron curtain”. Technology companies have previously identified Russia’s risk exposure.
– That’s why Google’s data centers are located in Hamina.
Data centers in the West, on the other hand, have Russian data, but much of it is a strict trade secret. One such place is Yandex’s data center in Mäntsälä.
Cyber attacks on Russia would become impossible if they could not be machined from within the country. Russia, for its part, could carry out its own targeted attacks without fear of massive retaliation.
The biggest impact would be mental, warn free internet advocates.
Ukraine has demanded that the West should disconnect Russia from the Internet on its own initiative. Bad idea, says the Finnish representative of the international internet organization Electronic Frontier.
– In our opinion, it would not be in anyone’s interest for the Russians to lose access to the main information channel and communication medium, says the President of EFFI Leena Romppainen.
The threat of the Internet is looming: the development of online bubbles is already well under way, thanks to China, Saudi Arabia and other countries that are strongly filtering the Internet.
– I hope that no quick action is taken now in the power of emotions. Free and shared internet is good for everyone, Romppainen says.
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