Runet crash. How officials blocked the Internet. Causes, effects and questions

Hello.

On the evening of January fourteenth I work. I’m slowly picking through the text, looking at the new flagship, trying out AI features. A warning window appears on your computer: the site has fallen and it is impossible to reach it. A simple connection status monitoring application shows that the hosting has stopped responding. I’m running a scan for a dozen resources from around the world to make sure that the problem is local. Something serious has happened, every line is colored red, not a single resource from my list is available, switching from an office connection to mobile networks does not help, the Internet is limited in availability, it is impossible to get to certain resources. It is not the entire Internet that lies, but all sites that are accessed via https:// and standard ports. Messages are beginning to appear on Telegram that the Runet has given up its life, the clock is ten minutes past six, the working day has not yet ended.

The phone starts ringing, journalists from different platforms ask the same question: what happened, are there any versions? I explain that at the moment it is too early to talk about the reasons for the failure, it has just begun, but everything looks as if someone made a mistake in the blocking parameters and blocked the Runet. Of course, we are talking about technical means of countering threats, or TSPU for short, that are at the disposal of Roskomnadzor. Operators do not see what exactly the RKN is doing at the TSPU and cannot influence it in any way. In fact, RKN has its own switch that allows you to filter traffic, turn off the connection on the networks of any operator, in a word, do anything, and on a nationwide scale. And such a system appeared as a response to external threats.

There is no doubt that such threats are not imaginary, they exist and can materialize at any time. The formation of such infrastructure is expensive, but it creates jobs, in theory complicates the market and should lead to the emergence of new knowledge among people working in telecoms. Knowledge and skills. And I believe that the emergence of another line of defense for the Runet is a useful and important thing. But, as always, there are nuances. Such a system imposes enormous responsibility on the performers; the cost of an error increases many times over, as we have already seen in practice several times.

A little less than a year ago, at the end of January 2024, the actions of officials disabled the Runet. I will quote an excerpt from an article about this:

“At the end of January 2024, a massive failure began in access to sites in the RU domain zone. Websites did not work, applications of banks and other companies stopped opening, and the Internet began to collapse. Someone unnamed in the ANO “Coordination Center for the National Internet Domain”, without checking, issued incorrect certificates for the RU domain zone, as a result, it became impossible to obtain the correct data for DNS servers. To understand the level of the problem, it is enough to say that the websites of even mobile operators who know how to work with technology and have built the maximum level of protection for their resources did not open. But protection from a person who does not understand what he is doing and does not bear any responsibility for such actions, while having in his hands the most powerful tools for destroying the Runet, simply does not exist. Sooner or later, such “failures” will be repeated. And if in that story the failure occurred due to the bungling and low qualifications of a particular person (he was never named, no conclusions were drawn from the story, everyone without exception quickly tried to forget it), then in the future we can expect that such people will be looked for purposefully to use them to destroy the Runet. At least the temporary effect of such actions can be quite noticeable, in particular, these are losses for the economy, a slowdown in all life in the country, there will be no exceptions.”

The problem in January 2024 and today is the same – the low qualifications of those who work for the state. There is a clear hierarchy in the labor market in which people choose jobs according to their skills and knowledge. In the corporate sector there is a shortage of qualified developers, network administrators, and managers. As a result, the cost of their labor is maximum, and if you directly compare their income with people who work in the RKN and related departments, you will get a difference of 5-10 times. I don’t know of any altruists who are ready to sacrifice their lives to work for the state and protect the Runet from external threats, when the payment for their work will be a pittance. Unfortunately, the facts confirm that I was right and suggest that the errors that caused both failures (January 2024 and 2025) were made due to the low qualifications of people who have access to tools that affect the Runet.

Today, for any country, the Internet is a huge part of the economy; without networks, a comfortable life is impossible. I often come across demagogues who claim: “Our fathers and grandfathers lived without the Internet, and nothing, somehow they raised us.” It turns out that we also need to go to the toilet on the street, wipe ourselves with burdocks and at the same time give up electricity in order to live like we once did in Rus’? Demagoguery of this kind, which belittles the importance of the Internet for modern life, is unacceptable. It creates an imaginary sense of calm, confidence that nothing bad will happen if there is no Internet. In fact, we will simply be thrown back into the past, and the entire economy will suffer from this. Moreover, inflation will skyrocket from this, as the cost of any goods and services within the country will rise sharply.

Let me give you a clear example. Large cities use traffic control systems, including traffic lights, surveillance cameras, and so on. Without the Internet, the system degrades, becomes dumber and begins to work differently. This dulling of the system automatically leads to an increase in traffic jams; they become less predictable. And you will spend more time in traffic jams, but that’s half the problem. The other part is the goods that are delivered to stores; cars will not be able to deliver them quickly, fuel costs and logistics costs will increase, which will be directly expressed in the price of goods on the shelves. And this is only part of the big picture that awaits us. The Internet literally influences everything that happens today in the economy and in our lives.

This leads to a simple conclusion: for any country, protecting its own economy and the Internet comes to the fore. Speaking about Russia, I note that it is not enough to create a line of defense in the form of a TSPU; we need to fill this line with people who understand and can protect us from threats, both real and potential. But now it turns out that, having created complex tools that can influence the entire Runet, we entrusted their management to people who do not always understand how to use them. And they prove this in practice. This is extremely dangerous for all of us.

Since the end of August 2024, YouTube has been blocked in Russia. Initially, both RKN and other officials tried to disown the very fact of blocking, pretending that Google’s equipment had degraded. This version does not stand up to criticism. But if you look at the situation today, you get the impression that blocking YouTube has become a convenient way to develop Russian video hosting sites. It turns out that the RKN used blocking in favor of commercial organizations and only in December was able to convince politicians, including the president, that this was a good deed. I have many questions about how officials can use a government instrument to provide preferences to commercial organizations. After all, de facto this leads to the fact that Russian hosting companies receive more money from advertising and so on. And here all the actions lie on the surface, but at the same time, the traffic of users who continue to watch YouTube leaves Russia, people become defenseless against an external threat, they can be followed, and this is the most innocent of what is happening.

You won’t be nice by force. Trying to limit competition always leads to losing, I have no doubt about that. In the absence of YouTube, the conditions of competition are such that there is no point in developing for Russian platforms, which is what we see in their example. There has been no ideological breakthrough; they remain video hosting sites without turning into social networks, which YouTube undoubtedly is.

The fall of Runet on January 14 – what exactly happened

The fall of Runet lasted about half an hour, it was extremely serious, as can be seen in independent sources. For example, we can look at MSK IX traffic.

Or evaluate the traffic of Rostelecom or Beeline (data from Cloudflare, which gives a noticeable picture of the decline).

All data indicates a sharp drop in traffic; it was impossible to open resources, use applications, and so on. Russian operators reported on what was happening uniformly – there were no problems on the networks, the failure was outside their area of ​​​​responsibility.

A little later, the domain coordination center reported: “The infrastructure of the top-level domains .ru and .рф and Russian DNS servers are working without failures” (quote from TASS).

The “it’s not my fault” game began, everyone denied their participation in the failure. It is noteworthy that the RKN, after the failure was eliminated, cheerfully reported along with others: “A short-term disruption of connectivity was detected. The operation of the network was promptly restored by the duty services of the Center for Monitoring and Control of the Public Communications Network.”

That is, it turns out that RKN was kind of great and everything broke on its own, and they fixed it. But there was no independent breakdown; it happened due to incorrect filtering rules at the TSPU.

Given the scale of the failure, public discussions and solutions are needed to ensure that such situations do not recur. But there is none of this, they sweep the dirt under the rug and try to forget it as quickly as possible. And without conclusions, repetition of such situations is inevitable. Let’s remember a similar failure in 2024, now it has happened again. But such disruptions will continue to increase.

There is one more point – impunity for actions and the ability to pretend that everything is happening outside the area of ​​​​responsibility of the same RKN. For example, on January 6, we had a failure in RuNet, MTS and a number of other operators and services went down. The explanation that was given officially was a break in the main canal. But all the signs pointed to an external attack, which the RKN should have repelled, but was unable to do so. Read the details at the link.

We have built excellent defensive lines, but there are no people on them who can repel attacks; they lack skills, knowledge and everything else. Therefore, the same TSPU are not only useless for us, they are harmful and do more damage to Russia and the inhabitants of the country than they serve anything useful.

In the story of the failure on January 14, there is another non-public point: operators in Russia are faced with a flood of requests (this is also the company’s money), moreover, the absence of those who would take responsibility for the event makes them extreme in the eyes of consumers. They are also demanding compensation for the lack of Internet and the inability to access websites. And this increases irritation towards the same RKN. It should be noted that even before that the department could not be called loved by anyone; it does not have a very good reputation. There are many conflicts inside (formally the RKN is subordinate to the Ministry of Digital Development, in reality the ministry cannot directly influence it).

Telecom is living in crisis mode, and we are faced with many difficult tasks. Failures caused by officials and department employees who do not have sufficient knowledge further deepen this crisis. We need to clearly understand that at this pace and with such problems, we will degrade more and more quickly in terms of the quality of communication networks, failures will become the norm. You can’t run away from them. And first of all, changes are required in the approach to the RKN, to how the department works and what it is responsible for. Alas, it is unlikely that this situation will continue, since everything said above is perceived exclusively as negative and has no basis. Officials will once again sweep another failure under the rug and remain silent about its causes. And this will continue until something terrible happens in the next failure, when people die, and such a scenario is not at all speculative, but quite real.