“Special services are checking the performance of all systems inside Russia”
Yesterday’s failure in the operation of Telegram, YouTube and some other services in the Russian Federation was caused by a check of the Internet infrastructure carried out by Russian intelligence services, as stated by Andrey Svintsov, deputy chairman of the State Duma Committee on Information Policy, Information Technologies and Communications.
«These failures are due to the fact that on the eve of the presidential elections, our intelligence services are checking the performance of all systems within Russia related to the infrastructure of the Internet and cybersecurity. During the checks, which, as a rule, go through stress tests, that is, some kind of cyber attacks that our specialists carry out, vulnerabilities are looked for», — he stated.
Yesterday, February 27, Russians experienced difficulties with the operation of Telegram, YouTube, State Services, «VKontakte», WhatsApp and other services. Roskomnadzor called it a «mass failure».
At the same time, users also discovered that blocked resources, including Instagram (owned by Meta, which is recognized as extremist in Russia and banned), could be opened freely without a VPN, but then this opportunity disappeared. This was also caused by the work of the intelligence services.
Prohibited sites, prohibited resources, prohibited social networks will have limited access, and everything will be in accordance with the current law. There is no need to be surprised here. This is the normal work of special services that are responsible for cybersecurity and the performance, for maintaining the infrastructure of all our IT resources. As for removing blocking — no, such issues are not discussed yet. Moreover — there is no such need. Most of our citizens have switched to domestic resources, and everyone is gradually forgetting what Western social networks are. Gradually, those resources that are blocked also go out of fashion, and our citizens switch to other resources: either foreign unblocked ones or domestic ones.
Andrey Svintsov