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Russia 'successfully tests' its unplugged internet

bbc.com

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Re: Russia 'successfully tests' its unplugged internet

#111

Post by freeflight »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #108
freeflight wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For starters, where do you see that the apps can be uninstalled? Since when system-installed apps can be removed by a user without rooting or replacing the system? Which is an issue that affects pretty much every smartphone with a default Android ROM: Google is baked deep in there, often there's a ton of additional smartphone vendor bloat and trackingware. A lot, if not all of that data can be accessed by US intell…

You are not wrong, but right now the consequences are materially different. As a Russian citizen it is not uncommon to go to jail for two years for expressing anti government views online, that kind of thing does not happen int he west - for now.

It doesn't happen in the West, because the West rather makes it happen in the Middle East [0], to such a degree that whole generations of people have been scarred for life [1].

While at home we jail people for viewing "terrorist content online" [2], which is so vaguely defined that it regularly ends up being "The other sides PoV", if that PoV even manages to penetrate to the everpresent layer of moderation on social media [3].

After terrorism, the next thing is now "hate speech" [4], and as much as US Americans think they are immune to such trends, they really are not. US millennials increasingly welcome and actually demand more moderation because they think that's gonna solve their right-wing extremist problem.

[0] https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/02/the-n...

[1] https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/10/saddest...

[2] https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-41479620

[3] https://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/327887/pbs-th...

[4] https://www.dw.com/en/germany-dozens-of-raids-over-online-ha...

Re: Russia 'successfully tests' its unplugged internet

#112

Post by dmitrykan »

capdeck wrote: post #106
viraptor wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 3. Halt foreign online payments That is extremely unlikely to happen. Payments, banking, investment will be always connected, or placed abroad in the required way. At least for important enough transactions - probably not Amazon, but stock trades...

>> 3. Halt foreign online payments > That is extremely unlikely to happen. That's what very much has already happened. Visa and MasterCard pulled their services a few years ago after another set of US sanctions. Also, if you are a business and using SWIFT to transact - US has the final say what you can and can not do. So now Russia has it's own payment card system MiR and working with China, India and even Iran on al…

> Visa and MasterCard pulled their services a few years ago after another set of US sanctions.

When did that happen? I’ve been paying with a Master Card just recently in Russia.

Re: Russia 'successfully tests' its unplugged internet

#113

Post by seventhtiger »

Nasrudith wrote: post #56
everdev wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No security is full proof, but they call it "hardening the target" when you reduce your attack surface.

Of course security is an obvious pretense for control. The way you actually reduce attack surface is to take the critical pieces off of it and minimize the paths to be watched, not the whole system. That would be like ensuring it is possible to close off all of the highways into Washington DC to response time for the three federal branches. If it was actually that damn important they would make and use secure tunnels…

I don't think this is such an effective control if you mean controlling the population. Usually when countries shut down the Internet it's to prevent protestors from organizing rather than disconnecting them from the outside world. This doesn't give them additional leverage considering the Russian government's current power.

This is actually most useful for security. At least if you are attacked your national network will survive.

Re: Russia 'successfully tests' its unplugged internet

#114

Post by gjs278 »

dang wrote: post #44
GhettoMaestro wrote: post #2

Too bad it’s only a test.

Please don't post nationalistic flamebait to HN. No snarky one-liners either. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Edit: you've been breaking the site guidelines badly and repeatedly lately. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21868444 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21853510 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21864399 If you keep doing this we're going to have to ban you again. I'd rather not, be…

his reply to you is entirely correct. stop being so condescending.

Re: Russia 'successfully tests' its unplugged internet

#115

Post by branzo »

sandworm101 wrote: post #104
azangru wrote: post #10

> Details of what the test involved were vague So we don’t know what exactly they tested. Why is this news, let alone an international one? Also, as far as I understand, what the Russians were officially saying was that they were developing fallback systems for the event if, in another bout of sanctions, Russia gets disconnected from the global internet. Which, given their standing with the international community, m…

It was almost certainly a test of a local root zone, a Russian-controlled DNS scheme capable of standing in for the real system. This could be tested without literally disconnecting and wouldn't be very difficult with the cooperation of local isps. But it probably broke https.

If u have a state-owned, state-run DNS service with a root zone and cooperation (forced or not) from ISPs, you really would not have to care about https, and if CT services are not reachable nobody would know.

Re: Russia 'successfully tests' its unplugged internet

#118

Post by branzo »

DaiPlusPlus wrote: post #12
azangru wrote: post #10

> Details of what the test involved were vague So we don’t know what exactly they tested. Why is this news, let alone an international one? Also, as far as I understand, what the Russians were officially saying was that they were developing fallback systems for the event if, in another bout of sanctions, Russia gets disconnected from the global internet. Which, given their standing with the international community, m…

Power consolidation. The Internet is currently the best way to get access to honest, quality journalism - which is probably the biggest threat to Putin, et cetera. I believe Putin wants to undo glasnost .

Glasnot. Glasnyet.

Re: Russia 'successfully tests' its unplugged internet

#119

Post by branzo »

omneity wrote: post #54
Scarbutt wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing that they don't already have in place with some configuration adjustments. The Internet is just a lot of interconnected routers.

I'm thinking BGP, DNS, IP subnets allocations and all the low level stuff. Also SSL authorities etc. I'm sure there's a lot of stuff you'd need to roll, I bet it would make for an interesting article :D

+1!

Re: Russia 'successfully tests' its unplugged internet

#120

Post by antpls »

branzo wrote: post #115
sandworm101 wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was almost certainly a test of a local root zone, a Russian-controlled DNS scheme capable of standing in for the real system. This could be tested without literally disconnecting and wouldn't be very difficult with the cooperation of local isps. But it probably broke https.

If u have a state-owned, state-run DNS service with a root zone and cooperation (forced or not) from ISPs, you really would not have to care about https, and if CT services are not reachable nobody would know.

How would that work ?

Aren't there private and public keys involved ? Public keys are pre-packaged with clients (Firefox/Chrome/etc), so the state can't just change or fake the private keys.

Maybe they would force all clients to prepackage a government key and then change all infrastructure to pretend all websites use this public key for their https traffic?

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