strong>Roskomnadzor, Russia’s telecommunications watchdog, banned today over 1.8 million IP addresses belonging to Amazon and Google’s cloud infrastructure.
Roskomnadzor Bans More Than 1.8 Million IP Addresses Belonging to Amazon and Google
It has been reported that Roskomnadzor, Russian Federal Service for Supervision of Communications, Information Technology and Mass Media, has banned more than 1.8 million IP addresses that belong to Amazon and Google.
Roskomnadzor has reportedly ordered the country’s ISPs to start blocking hundreds of thousands of Amazon IP addresses, Meduza wrote:
On Monday [April 16] evening, according to Anti-Corruption Foundation activist Vladislav Zdolnikov, Roskomnadzor added four “subnet masks” to its “out-load list,” which specifies the domains and websites Russian Internet providers are required to block.
Apparently, the first three subnets contain 131,000 IP addresses each. The fourth subnet contained 262,00 IP addresses. As a result of these bans, more than 655,000 IP addresses owned by Amazon have been banned.
What is the reason for these edgy measures?
An unofficial copy of Roskomnadzor’s Internet blacklist says that the hundreds of thousands of Amazon IP addresses in addition to some owned by Google and Telegram are prohibited because of a decision by the Attorney General’s Office that is technically unrelated to the April 13 court ruling in Moscow that allowed the government to start blocking Telegram, the Meduza website wrote.
That is not all. Later, the Russian telecommunications warden added another subnet of 131,070 IP addresses, as well as the subnet 35.192.0.0/12, which contains more than one million Google IP addresses.
Roskomnadzor has confirmed that it is banning countless Amazon IP addresses Amazon that are being used to sidestep the blocking of Telegram.
Roskomnadzor banned Telegram in Russia last Friday, April 13.
The reason for these measures is Telegram’s refusal to deliver customers’ encryption keys to the FSB, the country’s intelligence service. Telegram moved servers to Amazon and Google to get around the initial ban to provide service to its Russian user base.
Users have been mocking the Russian government’s decision over Twitter because there are quite a few secondary side effects. Many legitimate web services have been blocked as well, such as online games, mobile apps, and cryptocurrency utilities.
Here’s an example of a sarcastic tweet that belongs to Manual (twitter handle @CatsVsHumanity):
Telegram started using Amazon’s AWS to bypass Russian censorship. Now, if you were @roscomnadzor (highly unlikely because nobody’s as dumb as these doorknobs), what would you do? Certainly not block 655352 IP addresses belonging to Amazon, right? That would be so stupid… oh
Milena Dimitrova
An inspired writer and content manager who has been with SensorsTechForum since the project started. A professional with 10+ years of experience in creating engaging content. Focused on user privacy and malware development, she strongly believes in a world where cybersecurity plays a central role. If common sense makes no sense, she will be there to take notes. Those notes may later turn into articles! Follow Milena @Milenyim
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