This series chronicles the beginnings and development of Russian digital censorship. Read the first, second and third parts of “The New Iron Curtain”.
In Moscow, the internet regulator – Roskomnadzor – has a central control office at Derbenevskaya Embankment 7. And a renovated 19th-century red brick building. The Center for the monitoring and control of public communication networks is called and has a staff of 70 people. Sergey Khutortsev , a former Russian security services officer, and the director.
Some time ago, Rozkomnadzor requested Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to install filters to block prohibited websites, which they did. A Russian organization replaces internet registrars, taking control over domain registration and who can host a website. Since then a Russian domain name system (NSDI) has taken over the functions of the global Domain Name System (DNS); Russian ISPs are required to provide data on cross-border data transfers and exchange points.
Foreign technology helped build this system. The Rozkomnadzor monitoring center is based on 30 servers provided by the Chinese company Lenovo and another 30 by the US company Super Micro Computer Corp. Across the country, Roskomnadzor has provided ISPs with Intrusive Deep Packet Inspection, control equipment supplied by the Israeli firm Silicom. Ltd. The company sold the devices to RDP.ru, itself part of Rostelecom, which, under the orders of the Rozkomnadzor censorship center, distributed the technology.
Most digital inspection tools look at the “headers” of a data packet – where it’s going and where it’s coming from. Intrusive Deep Packet Inspection, a Western technology, filters all internet traffic. It allows network providers to peek into digital message packets, reading details such as the website a user is visiting or the content of unencrypted messages. “You open the envelope, rather than just reading the address on a letter,” explains an engineer working in Deep Packet Inspection.
The Roskomnadzor censorship center does not just control traffic. It suppresses entire websites – in a particular region or across the country. Since early 2021, Roskomnadzor has been calling for internet service providers to switch to the national NSDI as a replacement for the global DNS. At the end of 2021, the system controlled 73% of the total internet traffic and 100% of the country’s mobile phone traffic.
In June 2021, Roskomnadzor began blocking VPN services that circumvent local restrictions. Opera VPN, a major service, ceased to function, and the company stopped providing the service in Russia. In the following months, the agency blocked another six VPN services.
Roskomnadzor has also moved to suppress Tor – an encryption software that allows users to bypass locally imposed web restrictions and keep their searches private. An estimated 300,000 Russians – about 15% of Tor users worldwide – are dependent on the software. The agency announced the block in a statement about “the introduction of centralized management in relation to the means to circumvent the restriction of information prohibited by law”.
For Russian censors, Tor represents a powerful symbol. While most of the technologies designed to avoid censorship were commercial tools, Tor was a political project, developed in the mid-1990s at the United States Naval Research Laboratory. In the mid-2000s, the US military released the Tor code, and the Electronic Frontier Foundation funded developers to continue the project. But the Kremlin perceived Tor as a technology developed and maintained by democratic countries to help activists.
For a long time it seemed that Tor was unsinkable software, even in Russia. As early as 2014, Moscow challenged the service, offering 3.9 million rubles ($ 86,000) for software cracking research. The effort failed. But Deep Packet Inspection overcame Tor’s formidable defenses. With the new national internet curtain in place, Russia was poised for a showdown with the tech titans of Silicon Valley.
The original article in English appeared on the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA) website with the title “The New Iron Curtain Part 4: Russia’s Sovereign Internet Takes Root”.
Andrei Soldatov is CEPA’s senior nonresident fellow, a Russian investigative journalist, and is co-founder and editor of Agentura.ru, an observatory on Russian intelligence activities. He has been involved in security and terrorism services since 1999.
Irina Borogan is CEPA’s senior nonresident fellow, a Russian investigative journalist, and is co-founder and deputy director of Agentura.ru.