In Russia, blocking VPN-services is being tested

In several Russian regions, the blocking of VPN services, which allow access to resources blocked by the Russian authorities, is being tested.

According to Ukrinform, this was reported by the Telegram channel GlobalCheck, which studies blockades on RuNet.

“We argue that this is not an” accidental “block – at least because these protocols are clearly blocked by any DPI and in principle can not be blocked” accidentally “, and to cancel their block takes no more than 5 minutes,” – said. in the message.

The publication expresses confidence that the Russian authorities are testing global blocking of VPN protocols in this way. The fact is that VPN is needed not only for the operation of some of your usual VPN-services, but also for building internal networks of different companies. Accordingly, the Russian government wants to understand how this will affect their work – what damage it will do to companies, what they will do, how fast, and other consequences.

As GlobalCheck reported the night before, l2TP and IPsec servers (protocols used for VPN connections) were not available in Western Siberia and Krasnodar, and IPsec is not available in Rostov-on-Don.

With the start of full-scale military aggression in Ukraine, the Russian authorities blocked the websites of all independent media, as well as Facebook and Instagram, recognizing Meta as extremist. More than a thousand resources were blocked due to the fact that they published information about the so-called “special operation” of Russia in Ukraine, the Roskomsvoboda project estimated.
Read also: The court in Russia fined Wikimedia for not removing articles with “fakes” about the war in Ukraine

On May 26, it became known that Roskomnadzor began to involve the Prosecutor General’s Office in unscheduled inspections of regional Internet operators for compliance with the law on blocking.

Roskomnadzor began to block VPN services in Russia in the fall of 2021. Among the blocked – Cloudflare WARP, Nord VPN, RedShield VPN, Opera VPN and more than a dozen services.

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