The head of Roskomnadzor about “holes” in the blocking system: the scale of the problem is greatly exaggerated

The head of Roskomnadzor, Alexander Zharov, said that the scale of the problem of "holes" in the blocking system, due to which some non-banned sites were inaccessible in June, seemed to him "greatly exaggerated."

“Until now, there has been no threat to the stability of the Runet as a whole and its critical resources,” he said in a statement on the Roskomnadzor website.

According to him, the problem could arise only for operators that "are not backbone and, as a rule, have a small subscriber base." At the same time, as stated in the publication, these providers account for 50-55 percent of the total.

Zharov notes that in some publications about the problem, “Roskomnadzor was blamed”, although the situation, in his opinion, is caused by a “regulatory problem”, namely, the fact that the operator is allowed to choose the blocking mechanism himself. To solve this problem, writes Zharov, it is necessary to legally allow his department to choose the procedure for blocking.

According to Zharov, “Roskomnadzor is well aware of not only how the blocking system works, but also how it needs to be improved and developed.” He said that “the completion of an automated system is now being finalized, which will allow real-time analysis of changes in IP addresses” of banned sites.

The text notes that “holes” in the blocking system are “quite regularly” written “on the Internet and even in some media”, and “Telegram channel analysts” prove “the harmfulness of the existing system” and “the likelihood of a collapse of vital Internet services, such as an electronic payment system.

Zharov's statement was the first detailed comment by Roskomnadzor about the "holes" in the blocking system, which became widely known in June 2017. Earlier, the agency mentioned the problem on June 7, blaming providers for blocking non-prohibited sites.

• In June 2017, certain non-prohibited websites, including Meduza, became inaccessible to some users in Russia. It turned out that the owners of some banned sites began to attribute to their domain names the IP addresses of other sites.
• As a result, small providers that do not have a domain name blocking system began to block these sites. Among these IP addresses were, in particular, the IP addresses of Internet payment authorization servers of several largest Russian banks.
• According to Vedomosti, Roskomnadzor suspected Alexander Litreev and Vladislav Zdolnikov, supporters of the opposition leader Alexei Navalny, of exploiting this vulnerability. in connection with these suspicions . Zdolnikov and activist Alexander Brusentsev left Russia