Russia-Ukraine: Is internet on verge of break-up?

The world, both physical and digital, finds itself in unprecedented times as the conflict in Ukraine rages on.

Corporate giants like Meta, Google and Apple, which have always presented themselves as neutral tech firms, are now putting their political flags on the mast, banning products from Russia in response to their invasion.

Meanwhile, the internet is changing for Russian users: Twitter and Facebook are blocked, TikTok doesn’t allow Russian users to post, and police are reportedly stopping people on the streets to see what they’re seeing on their phones.

There are now questions about whether the conflict may not only alter the geography of the world, but fundamentally change the nature of the global Internet.

The Ukrainian government has singled out individual tech companies to ask them to ban services in Russia, and the list of tech companies refusing to do business or sell products is growing by the day.

Now Ukraine’s tech-savvy leaders are calling for something bigger: that Russia completely disconnect from the global Internet.

The calls were answered with an emphatic “No” by ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers), which is in charge of Internet governance. It was asked to revoke Russia’s top-level domains, such as .ru, along with the nation’s associated Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) certificates.

But its motto is “One World, One Internet” and in his response to Ukraine’s Deputy Prime Minister Mykhailo Fedorov, ICANN Executive Director Goran Marby said: “Within our mission, we maintain neutrality and act in support of Global Internet. Our mission does not extend to taking punitive action, issuing sanctions, or restricting access against segments on the Internet, regardless of provocation.”

The digital privacy group Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) was one of several organizations that supported the decision.

In a statement, EFF’s Corynne McSherry and Konstantinos Komaitis said the war was not the time to “mess with the Internet”. Interfering with the fundamental protocols of the Internet infrastructure would have “dangerous and long-lasting consequences.”

These would include:

Ukraine has also asked Cloudflare, a web infrastructure company that offers protection against cyber attacks, to terminate its services within Russia.

In a blog post, the firm said it had considered these requests, but concluded that “Russia needs more Internet access, not less.”

For many, the court orders were a dangerous slippery slope to what is known as the Splinternet, where different countries have different versions of the Internet.

The Great Firewall of China, as it is known, is perhaps the most obvious example of how a country can create its own network.

But in Iran too, network content is monitored and outside information is limited by the state-owned Telecommunications Company of Iran.

Russia itself has been experimenting with a sovereign internet, dubbed the Runet, for several years, though it has adapted to the existing internet rather than China’s built-from-scratch version.

In 2019, the Russian government said it had successfully tested the system. At the time, few understood the need, but now, in the context of the Ukraine invasion, it all “makes a lot more sense,” said Professor Alan Woodward, a computer scientist at the University of Surrey.

In that test, Russian ISPs were asked to effectively set up the Internet within their borders as if it were a giant intranet, a private network of websites that don’t talk to the outside world.

The initiative involved restricting the points at which the Russian version of the network connected to its global counterpart.

Now it appears that Russia is retesting those systems: In a Russian government memo, ISPs were asked to tighten their security and connect to domain name system (DNS) servers in Russia.

Some thought the memo and the March 11 test completion date meant that Russia intended to go into isolation imminently.

Professor Woodward sees it more as another readiness test: “It was more about Russia asking ISPs to prepare, to make local copies of the DNS, the Internet phone book, and to have local versions of third-party software that comes from servers outside of Russia, like Javascript.”

Russia has since denied that it is going into isolation, saying the test was about protecting Russian websites from foreign cyberattacks.

But James Griffiths, author of The Great Firewall of China, thinks the plug could be pulled at any moment: “Cutting off the internet, making sure Russians only consume content that the Kremlin approves of, that sort of thing makes sense strategically.” so they can see the way we’re headed,” he told the BBC.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if that goes into effect in the next few weeks or months.”

Abishur Prakash, author of the book The World Is Vertical: How Technology Is Remaking Globalization, believes the conflict is reshaping the Internet from “a global system that the whole world has plugged into” into something more fractured.

“Due to geopolitics, a different design for the Internet is emerging, where nations are either isolated or developing their own alternative. Global bridges, such as social media platforms, that have connected populations for decades, are collapsing” .

And, according to James Griffiths, the new axis of net power will be divided between the West and China/Russia.

“Fang Binxing, known as the founding father of the Great Firewall of China, visited Russia in 2016 to help them in what they are doing and make the Russian firewall much more similar to the Chinese one,” he said.

And now Russia will turn to Beijing again, as Internet companies withdraw services and products, it thinks: “Since the Russian economy is isolated from much of the world economy, they are turning to China. They will have to depend on China.” even more than in the past.”

Until now, technology firms such as Huawei have not said anything official about the conflict.