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 i can is the
group responsible for assigning ip addresses and managing the
domain name system i can is a pretty important organization.
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 one revoke russian domain names like
dot ru two revoke ssl certificates these are used to protect and validate
internet traffic and three shut down dns route 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
i can publish an open letter of their own essentially saying i cannot do this
firstly some of ukraine's demands just don't take into account the way the
internet works i can has nothing to do with issuing russian
ssl certificates and those DNS
route servers are run by independent organizations but it's more
interesting to consider what i can could do they could theoretically mess with
those russian domains dot ru and things like that however that would come with
a whole host of his own problems.
You see i can 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
of course 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 i can if i can is like the
internet's metaphorical address book then maybe you can instead target the
roads that lead to those addresses and one company has done just that cogent's
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
000 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 telecoms provider ross telecom 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 even 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 a tool commonly used by authoritarian regimes in
times of unrest because it makes it harder for ordinary people to voice their
descent 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 populace 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 rounet and it's been built by
the russian government over the last 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 states 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 decentralized so no
one personal company can just shut the door to an entire country however watch
this space unlikely things do happen as we've learned over the last couple of
years now this is a topic i really want to hear your guys's opinion on do you
agree with me that punishing russia by cutting them off 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 this video was made possible by
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