War censorship exposes Putin's leaky internet controls

Long before waging war on Ukraine President Vladimir Putin was working to make Russias internet a powerful tool of surveillance and social control akin to Chinas socalled Great FirewallSo when Western tech companies began cutting ties with Russia following its invasion Russian investigative journalist Andrei Soldatov was alarmedHed spent years exposing Russian censorship and feared that wellintentioned efforts to aid Ukraine would instead help Putin isolate Russians from the free flow of information aiding the Kremlins propaganda warLook guys the only space the Russians have to talk about Ukraine and what is going on in Russia is Facebook Soldatov now exiled in London wrote on Facebook in the wars first weekYou cannot just like kill our access Facebook didnt although the Kremlin soon picked up that baton throttling both Facebook and Twitter so badly they are effectively unreachable on the Russian internet Putin has also blocked access to both Western media and independent news sites in the country and a new law criminalises spreading information that contradicts the governments line On Friday the Kremlin said it would also restrict access to Instagram Yet the Kremlins latest censorship efforts have also revealed serious shortcomings in the governments bigger plans to straightjacket the internetAny Russian with a modicum of tech smarts can circumvent Kremlin efforts to starve Russians of fact That puts providers of internet bandwidth and associated services sympathetic to Ukraines plight in a tough spot On one side they face public pressure to punish the Russian state and economic reasons to limit services at a time when bills might well go unpaid On the other theyre wary of helping stifle a free flow of information that can counter Kremlin disinformation for instance the states claim that Russias military is heroically liberating Ukraine from fascistsAmazon Web Services continues to operate in Russia although it says its not taking on any new customers Both Cloudflare which helps shield websites from denialofservice attacks and malware and Akamai which boosts site performance by putting internet content closer to its audience also continue to serve their Russian customers with exceptions including cutting off stateowned companies and firms under sanctions Microsoft by contrast hasnt said whether it will halt its cloud services in the country although it has suspended all new sales of products and services USbased Cogent which provides a major backbone for internet traffic has cut direct connections inside Russia but left open the pipes through subsidiaries of Russian network providers at exchanges physically outside the country Another major US backbone provider Lumen has done the same We have no desire to cut off Russian individuals and think that an open internet is critical to the world Cogent CEO Dave Schaeffer said in an interview Direct connections to servers inside Russia he said could potentially be used for offensive cyber efforts by the Russian governmentHe said Cogent is providing Ukrainian customers free service during the conflict Schaeffer said these moves might impair internet video in Russia but will leave plenty of bandwidth for smaller files Other major backbone providers in Europe and Asia also continue to serve Russia a net importer of bandwidth said Doug Madory director of internet analysis for the network management firm Kentik Cloudflare continues to operate four data centres in Russia even though Russian authorities ordered government websites to drop foreignowned hosting providers as of FridayIn a March 7 blog post the company said it had determined Russia needs more Internet access not less Under a 2019 sovereign internet law Russia is supposed to be able to operate its internet independent of the rest of the world In practice that has brought Russia closer to the kind of intensive internet monitoring and control practised by China and Iran Its telecommunications oversight agency Rozkomnadzor successfully tested the system at scale a year ago when it throttled access to Twitter It uses hundreds of socalled middleboxes routerlike devices run and remotely controlled by bureaucrats that can block individual websites and services installed by law at all internet providers inside RussiaBut the system which also lets the FSB security service spy on Russian citizens is a relative sieve compared to Chinas Great Firewall Andrew Sullivan president of the nonprofit Internet Society said theres no evidence it has the ability to successfully disconnect Russia from the wider internetWhen it comes to censorship the only ones who can really do it are the Chinese said Serge Droze a senior security engineer at Swissbased Proton Technologies which offers software for creating virtual private networks or VPNs a principal tool for circumventing state censorship ProtonVPN which Droze says has been inventive in finding ways to circumvent Russian blocking reports clocking 10 times as many daily signups than before the war Russian authorities are also having some success blocking the privacyprotecting Tor browser which like VPNs lets users visit content at special onion sites on the socalled dark web researchers sayTwitter just created a Tor site other outlets such as The New York Times also have them The Kremlin has not however blocked the popular Telegram messaging appThis story has been sourced from a third party syndicated feed agencies Midday accepts no responsibility or liability for its dependability trustworthiness reliability and data of the text Midday managementmiddaycom reserves the sole right to alter delete or remove without notice the content in its absolute discretion for any reason whatsoever