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Credit to Author: Chris Stokel-Walker| Date: Fri, 01 Apr 2022 11:00:00 +0000<\/strong><\/p>\n Chris Stokel-Walker<\/a><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n To revist this article, visit My Profile, then View saved stories<\/a>.<\/p>\n To revist this article, visit My Profile, then View saved stories<\/a>.<\/p>\n Russian Twitter users<\/span> noticed something strange when they tried to access the service on March 4: They couldn\u2019t. For the previous six days, anyone trying to access Twitter from within Russia saw their internet speed slow to a crawl, no matter how fast their connection. Then came the blackout.<\/p>\n Twitter going offline showed how seriously the Russian state took social media\u2019s role in amplifying dissent about the country\u2019s invasion of Ukraine. And it demonstrated Russia\u2019s progress in creating a \u201csplinternet,\u201d a move that would effectively detach the country from the rest of the world\u2019s internet infrastructure. Such a move would allow Russia to control conversations more tightly and tamp down dissent\u2014and it's getting closer by the day.<\/p>\n The gold standard of digital walled gardens is China, which has managed to separate itself from the rest of the digital world with much success\u2014although people still find their way around the Great Firewall. \u201cI think they would aspire to [mimic China],\u201d Doug Madory of Kentik, a San Francisco-based internet monitoring company, says of Russia. \u201cBut it wasn't easy for the Chinese.\u201d China tasked huge numbers of tech experts to create its version of the internet, and it spent huge amounts of money. By 2001, the International Center for Human Rights and Democratic Development estimated, China spent $20 billion<\/a> on censorious telecom equipment every year. The famed Great Firewall is just that: a firewall that inspects every bit of traffic entering Chinese cyberspace and checks it against a block list. Most internet traffic into China passes through three choke points, which block any untoward content. Copying the Chinese approach in Russia is something Madory believes may be beyond Russian president Vladimir Putin\u2019s reach. \u201cI don't think Russia has invested that kind of energy in engineering resources to replicate it,\u201d Madory says. \u201cThere are quite a few countries that would love to have what China's got, but they just can't. They haven't got the people to do it. There\u2019s a ways to go before Russia becomes like China.\u201d<\/p>\n Even if Russia did have the people, inserting barriers into relatively open internet infrastructure built over decades is far from straightforward. Controlling a country\u2019s internet requires two major components: separating yourself from the rest of the world, and cutting access from within. \u201cThere are lots of things going on on either side of the ledger,\u201d says Madory. But both are harder for Russia than China because it\u2019s starting from a comparatively open internet, after years of engagement with the West. (China, by contrast, has been closed almost since the first people logged on to the internet, following a February 1996 order giving the state absolute control over its design and establishing a prohibition on \u201cinciting to overthrow the government or the socialist system\u201d\u2014meaning it was insular by design.)<\/p>\n Russia\u2019s internet regulator, Roskomnadzor, can by law demand that Russia\u2019s internet service providers (ISPs) block content or don\u2019t complete traffic requests. They can reroute internet traffic away from sites that Roskomnadzor deems unsuitable for everyday Russians, essentially cutting any individual browser off from the rest of the world. However, Russia has more than 3,000 ISPs<\/a>, which implement diktats at different speeds. \u201cEverybody\u2019s left to their own devices to figure out how to comply with the government order to block the BBC or something,\u201d says Madory. Each ISP also uses different methods<\/a> to try and block access to websites that the Russian media regulator says are forbidden, with varying levels of success. \u201cDepending on the technique they adopt, circumventing the block can be easier or harder,\u201d says Maria Xynou, with the internet censorship nonprofit the Open Observatory of Network Interference (OONI).<\/p>\n Most commonly, Russian ISPs reset user connections as they try to access websites, leaving them trapped in a frustrating loop of unfulfilled requests. That happens by effectively hijacking a request from a web browser to access a website. \u201cBy resetting your connection, they\u2019re preventing you from connecting to the intended website or service,\u201d says Xynou. There are other blocking techniques used by Russia. One stops TLS connections, the cryptographic mechanism that governs most internet connections, which in turn blocks access to specific websites. Another method involves delivering block notices to users trying to access a website by manipulating the Domain Name System, or DNS, which is essentially the phonebook of the internet. If a browser can't access this phonebook, it can't load a website.<\/p>\n Matt Burgess<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Morgan Meaker<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Maryn McKenna<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n The system can work, but has its flaws. \u201cWhen censorship is so decentralized, it does mean that it ends up being way less effective than if it were implemented in a centralized way,\u201d says Xynou. Russia has made some steps toward trying to rectify that, but in recent history it has struggled to implement nationwide blocks or bars on websites deemed unsavory. That\u2019s because of the way Russian internet infrastructure works.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cRussia\u2019s internet ecosystem is badly embedded into the global one,\u201d says Alena Epifanova, a research fellow at the German Council on Foreign Relations, a foreign policy nonprofit, who has studied Russia\u2019s internet censorship and infrastructure. \u201cWe see a lot of foreign companies involved in running their infrastructure, from telecommunications to data delivery networks.\u201d That includes Nokia, whose hardware reportedly powers SORM<\/a>, Russia\u2019s vast social media snooping operation.<\/p>\n Seemingly aware of this, Russia has made some progress in untangling itself from the global internet infrastructure\u2014an action that would enable it to exert more complete control over the flow of information. \u201cThe whole thing is about control of information,\u201d says Epifanova. \u201cThey fear information.\u201d<\/p>\n To avoid the dissemination of damaging information, Russia has been trying to develop its own sovereign technology capabilities. In 2015, Russia\u2019s national security strategy<\/a> made provisions for what was deemed \u201crational import substitution\u201d\u2014or switching out foreign-made IT hardware for domestic alternatives. The move was designed to help mitigate the effect of sanctions, which led to an internet infrastructure provider, Cogent Communications, pulling out of Russia<\/a> a month ago. The nationalistic policy also served another purpose: handing Russia more power over the companies that power and provide internet access within its borders. That hasn\u2019t wholly worked: Russia is still reliant on international companies to power large parts of its internet, though it did cope relatively well with Cogent\u2019s departure. It simply ported traffic onto other internet backbones, which handled the disruption.<\/p>\n But 2015\u2019s protectionist pivot isn\u2019t the only step Russia made towards insulating its internet. In May 2019, Putin announced the RuNet, a sovereign internet disconnected from the rest of the world, as part of a domestic internet law that came into force<\/a> in November 2019. The RuNet has three pillars: One involves installing packet-snooping hardware on company networks, enabling the Russian state to monitor what is being said online. Another gives authorities powers to centralize control of the internet, while the third creates a national DNS system that would mean Russia could ensure that no one within its borders can easily access banned websites. The national DNS system maintains a localized copy of the global internet<\/a> within Russia, similar to the intranet-style system maintained by China and to a lesser extent Iran with its National Information Network. By December 24, 2019, Russia claimed<\/a> it had successfully tested uncoupling itself from the global internet, without needing to be connected to the rest of the world through Russia\u2019s 10 known public internet exchange points<\/a>\u2014though the effectiveness and legitimacy of the tests are both disputed. \u201cThe whole scope of the implementation is unknown,\u201d says Epifanova\u2014which is probably the way Russia likes it.<\/p>\n But there are signs that Russia is making progress, even if for officials it remains frustratingly slow. Back in March 2021, Roskomnadzor announced<\/a> that it was throttling access to Twitter in Russia because it claimed it hosted content that encouraged drug use, sexualization of children, and suicide. To many people\u2019s surprise, it worked. Rather than ISPs implementing ad hoc measures to block Twitter, a new method, called TSPU (\u201ctechnical solution for threat countermeasures\u201d), was implemented<\/a>. The TPSU method\u2014as far as international watchers can tell\u2014utilizes deep packet inspection boxes, which monitor internet traffic for relevant URLs that are on a block list, then halt all packets containing those requests so they aren\u2019t fulfilled. In simple terms, if you want to visit a website Russia doesn\u2019t want you to, you simply can\u2019t connect to it.<\/p>\n There was just one problem with the March 2021 throttling of Twitter: It wasn\u2019t coded correctly. As well as collecting all requests to Twitter and its associated sites in its dragnet, it also stopped access to any site that contained \u201ct.co\u201d (a shortened URL used by Twitter) anywhere in the URL, meaning reddit.co<\/strong>m and microsoft.co<\/strong>m were also caught up by the ban. \u201cThey ended up messing up the rule and throttling all kinds of traffic,\u201d says Madory. \u201cEngineers around the world could empathize. It was kind of a funny story.\u201d<\/p>\n Things have evolved since then. The recent attempt<\/a> to throttle access to Twitter, identified by OONI as taking place between February 26 and March 4, was more successful, and Twitter has been offline in Russia ever since. Such successes show that Russia might be careering toward its desired splinternet. \u201cIt\u2019s definitely quite alarming,\u201d says Xynou. \u201cGenerally, censorship has always been very decentralized, whereas centralized throttling of a service has only been observed over the last year in the country.\u201d Such a move suggests Russia could be moving toward a centralized, Chinese-style approach to online censorship. \u201cThat would mean the implementation of censorship would be much more total and much more efficient,\u201d says Xynou. Such a system, she adds, would make it much harder for Russians to circumvent any blocks. Adding a fourth country, beyond China, North Korea<\/a>, and Iran<\/a> to the list of those who tightly control the online world would also have a potentially pernicious knock-on effect\u2014and embolden other nations to try similar crackdowns.<\/p>\n