Russia to disconnect from the internet as part of a planned test

The Egyptians turned everything off.

Edit: The BBC article has a bit more detail.

"The test is also expected to involve ISPs demonstrating that they can direct data to government-controlled routing points. These will filter traffic so that data sent between Russians reaches its destination, but any destined for foreign computers is discarded."

Why else would you need to discard outbound traffic?

https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-47198426?intlink_from_ur...

I'm only finding info on a 2014 block to stop coup protests and a request in 2017 for Facebook to delete 309 items they claimed were illegal.

Nothing about the Thai people DDoSing government websites over a Facebook block.

Go do it for sure, but you’ll find trivial confirmations and conversations about declining health and not a lot else.

I only operate CW (morse) myself because that’s more interesting and there is a technical challenge.

My guess is the US thinks along the same lines, but since most things Internet are US-based to begin with, they're probably less concerned with a dramatic public test.

This is like demolishing one’s cities to claim immunity from nuclear attack. There’s no reason the damage couldn’t have been incurred at a later date, only when necessary.

Disconnecting from the world will leave Russia economically, scientifically, culturally and thus militarily poorer. The only reason the decision makes sense is it helps keep Putin and his gang in power.

>This might improve that situation a little bit for current and future Russian governments

Yeah, a totalitarian militarized state with state propaganda and own internal government-approved network, I've dreamed about that for my whole life.

Or before first strike, and attack from sources outside the country. In which case, seeing Russia go dark would be like an indication of cyber "missle" launch, but with probably milliseconds of early warning.

Makes me wonder if nations have or will have systems to try to detect when another nation is going offline and try to go offline themselves before damage can be done. Perhaps the best attacks will be launched from inside borders (imagine if one nation had hidden missle silos inside another nation's borders).

Then imagine if actual network problems were misinterpreted as a cyber "launch," and caused one nation to "launch" in response. Similar to ICBMs, there would be a window in which counterattacks could be launched, but it would be very, very small in comparison.

It's oddly enough the reverse.

From what it looks like, the idea is to try and make sure that the country's IT infruatructure and its essential public services - email, web, search, etc. - remain functional, should it be ever cut off from the Internet for whatever reason. It's a doomsday thinking, it goes against the very essence of the Internet, but this is something aimed at asserting country's independence.

I'd prefer this would've not been needed, but given the current state of affairs I can't say I'm shoked they are doing this.