Russia extends firewall to limits amid censorship of Telegram, WhatsApp, and YouTube

The full blocking of WhatsApp in Russia is linked to the nation’s firewall running out of capacity amid attempts to slow down Telegram, experts in the field suggest.

Besides the two messengers, Russian authorities are also cutting traffic to YouTube, overloading the technology employed by the state to censor internet for its citizens.

Russia extends itself to block massive online content and communication

The sudden and complete restriction of access to the popular messenger WhatsApp and YouTube in Russia is likely related to efforts to slow down Telegram, local media unveiled, quoting specialists with knowledge of how the system works.

Russia’s telecom watchdog, Roskomnadzor, removed the WhatsApp domain from its DNS servers on Wednesday, effectively preventing the use of Meta’s messaging service in the country. It appears it did that also with Google’s video sharing platform a day earlier.

The domains have been deleted from the National Domain Name System (NDNS), established after the adoption of the so-called “sovereign internet” law.

Under the legislation, the Federal Service for Supervision of Communications, Information Technology and Mass Media (Roskomnadzor) is responsible for enforcing the Russian equivalent to the Chinese framework for internet control.

The strategy is the same in both case, so is the reason which is of technical nature, according to Dzhemali Avalishvili, managing director of the infrastructure integrator Ultimatek, who commented on the latest developments for RBC. Quoted by the Russian business news portal, Avalishvili explained further:

The TSPU (Technical Means of Counteracting Threats) devices are deployed at internet service providers to allow them to throttle or block internet traffic to targeted platforms.

In comparison with China’s “Great Firewall,” which operates on a national level, Russia’s solution allows for more precise, highly targeted and geographically defined restricting.

However, the Russian system isn’t built to last, Avalishvili pointed out, and is running out of resources now when it has to deal with multiple and widely used platforms. He elaborated:

Targeting Telegram is harder and requires resources that Russia doesn’t have

Slowing down Telegram is much harder than in the case of all of the other affected services and websites, the expert emphasized.

He highlighted that tech entrepreneur Pavel Durov’s messenger has stronger security and more experience with previous attempts to block it in other countries.

Avalishvili added that Telegram’s unique architecture relies on a distributed infrastructure of mirrors and content delivery networks (CDNs).

“Its encryption protocol is designed to make deep packet inspection (DPI) as difficult as possible. To slow down Telegram, you need to deploy colossal computing power,” he detailed.

The privacy-oriented messenger has tens of millions of users in Russia, and not only among citizens and businesses, but also government institutions and other organizations.

Almost everyone in the country has the messenger installed on their smartphones, logging in several times a day to read and write, chimed in Alexey Uchakin, an independent telecom market specialist.

While WhatsApp used to be more popular in the Russian Federation, it never significantly modernized its infrastructure to successfully circumvent Moscow’s restrictions, he noted, agreeing that blocking Telegram is definitely harder.

He is convinced that Roskomnadzor is removing the domains of previously restricted services to “clear up resources to slow down Telegram.”

In a broad interview with the official TASS news agency, the Kremlin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov insisted that the messenger must comply with Russia’s laws and ensure protection for its citizens, before the restrictions are removed, although some say Moscow has already made up its mind about its future.

President Putin’s press secretary set similar conditions for resuming WhatsApp’s full services in Russia, where its parent company, Facebook’s owner Meta, has been designated as an “extremist” organization. He accused the latter of lacking the willingness to engage in dialogue with Russian authorities on the matter.

Roskmonadzor limited voice calls through both apps in August, alleging they were increasingly being used by fraudsters and extremists. The measures against them seem to be part of a campaign to make Russians use a state-approved alternative called Max, which critics say can be used for surveillance and censorship.

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