Color me skeptical

Russian authorities and major internet providers are planning to disconnect the country from the internet as part of a planned experiment, Russian news agency RosBiznesKonsalting (RBK) reported last week.

The reason for the experiment is to gather insight and provide feedback and modifications to a proposed law introduced in the Russian Parliament in December 2018.

A first draft of the law mandated that Russian internet providers should ensure the independence of the Russian internet space (Runet) in the case of foreign aggression to disconnect the country from the rest of the internet.

  ZDNet

So....is that what they're planning on doing to other countries? I still wonder about that three-day period at the end of December when we had 9-11 systems down at the same time in 37 states and electrical explosions in two at the same time.

In addition, Russian telecom firms would also have to install "technical means" to re-route all Russian internet traffic to exchange points approved or managed by Roskomnazor, Russia's telecom watchdog.

Roskomnazor will inspect the traffic to block prohibited content and make sure traffic between Russian users stays inside the country, and is not re-routed uselessly through servers abroad, where it could be intercepted.

A date for the test has not been revealed, but it's supposed to take place before April 1, the deadline for submitting amendments to the law --known as the Digital Economy National Program.

[...]

RBK reported that all internet providers agreed with the law's goals, but disagreed with its technical implementation, which they believe will cause major disruptions to Russian internet traffic.

Yes, I think that's definitely going to happen. I believe the government knows that.

Ongoing discussions are in regards to finding the proper technical methods to disconnect Russia from the internet with minimal downtime to consumers and government agencies.

[...]

The Russian government has been working on this project for years. In 2017, Russian officials said they plan to route 95 percent of all internet traffic locally by 2020.

[...]

Russia's response comes as NATO countries announced several times that they were mulling a stronger response to cyber attacks, of which Russia is constantly accused of carrying out.

[...]

The end goal is for Russian authorities to implement a web traffic filtering system like China's Great Firewall, but also have a fully working country-wide intranet in case the country needs to disconnect.

Is the timing of this connected in any way to Trump's declaration regarding the possibility of shutting down the government or declaring a national emergency this week? Or is that purely coincidental?

"In case the country needs to disconnect." And we don't even have a program to secure our elections from cyber attack. What would we do if we needed to disconnect to protect our infrastructure?

Somebody across the pond is worried about the timing of this test. And we've been told that Russia has been involved in the Brexit fiasco as well as our own election.



Conspiracy theory?

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.