Russia was tonight hit by a massive internet meltdown.
“Vladimir Putin’s web domain has experienced major disruption, leaving users unable to access many popular websites and apps, adding giants like Yandex and Google. Initially, it’s unclear whether the flaw is entirely internal or if it’s an external attack.
The cause of this outage was first known as an outage of DNSSEC, the extension responsible for authenticating sites on the Russian Internet, also known as the RuNet. This came as Putin seeks to isolate Russia’s network from the West, thereby restricting access for its people. Access to outside influences.
“There was no advance warning about the chaos, but Russia did not blame foreign interference in the first place in the first place. The electronic chaos lasted at least an hour and a part and covered all 11 of Russia’s time zones, from the Baltic to the Pacific.
Major failures hit Russian mobile networks like MTS and Megafon. Online shopping platforms were also badly hit. Cash registers linked to Russia’s biggest bank Sberbank – which operates the country’s largest payments system – failed in supermarkets.
Queues formed in stores and on screens announcing: “One of ours is not yet available” and “Discounts cannot be applied on loyalty cards”. The website is down,” complain users. Both the Kremlin’s website and the Russian government’s websites were blocked. temporarily beaten.
The problems stem from a series of regional blackouts this week, widely perceived as state interference through Roskomnadzor (Russia’s media watchdog) as Putin’s regime seeks to censor the internet or restrict access to certain hours. These arrangements are related to a preference for temporarily imposing an electronic repression on the occasion of anti-war or anti-Putin demonstrations. Still, the authorities crumble to marvel.
Andrey Vorobyov, director of the Domain Coordination Center, showed his commitment to solving the technical problem. “We are working on a technical factor, I can’t talk right now,” Vorobyov said. The Ministry of Digital Development insisted: “In the coming years In the future, the sites in the ArrayRU zone will be restored. A technical factor affecting the ArrayRU zone related to the global DNSSEC infrastructure has occurred.
This takes into account the DNS protocol that promises data integrity and reliability. “Specialists from the Internet Technical Center and MSK-IX are rushing toward it. . . . Restoration paintings are underway. We will keep you informed of the situation. Most access was restored around 9:30 p. m. in Moscow, after barely two hours of blackouts.
“Users in Moscow are finding it difficult to pay with banking apps and the state-run services portal,” the official RIA Novosti news agency reported. Russian network expert Maria Avdeeva said: “The widespread network disruption in Russia. There has been a recovery in Yandex, Gosuslug, Sberbank, Ozon, Wildberries, VTB, Alfa-Bank and Tinkoff Bank. Russia has been building its remote Internet (. ru) for years. Today, a major disruption proves that preventing it is very easy.
Ukrainian official Anton Gerashchenko has not claimed responsibility for the collapse, even though Kyiv has admitted in recent days to hacking defense-related operators in Russia. “A large-scale outage in Russia: many websites on the Arrayru domain have stopped opening,” he said. “Banking apps,” Sberbank adds, “don’t work. Failures are observed in the operation of mobile operators. The reasons for this failure are unclear. “
The Moscow Times quoted experts as saying, “The Russian government has long warned that they would try to move all users in the country to a national DNS server. That’s what’s happening right now with a lot of sites in the Arrayru area. “
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