SOCHI. Oct 20 (Interfax) - The Russian center for monitoring and control of telecommunications networks, which was set up under the so-called sovereign Runet law to block prohibited content in Russia, will from next year also be used to counter global distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) and other Internet attacks, its director Sergei Khutortsev said.
"The automatic security system of the Russian segment of the Internet (ASBI) is seen as a versatile system to address a wide range of threats. (...) Whereas we now began from content-related threats, and these are hard to counter: all of you must have heard about Twitter, about certain VPN service that we are blocking, this is open information. We are evolving precisely into countering computer attacks, countering sophisticated complex threats and global DDoS attacks which impact the entire Russian segment of the Internet," Khutortsev said during the 20th Spectr-2021 telecommunications industry forum on Wednesday.
The Center was created around the Main Radiofrequency Center controlled by the telecoms regulator Roskomnadzor.
This year has seen DDoS attacks of up to 2.5 Tbit/sec, the director said. "Such volumes of traffic are extremely difficult to process by a single operator. Along the way towards its destination the attack will actually affect a huge number of telecommunications operators and telecommunications equipment, unless we mitigate this attack right at the border using the devices we possess," Khutortsev said.
According to his presentation, whereas in 2021 the Center actively responds to Runet safety threats by restricting access to prohibited content and limiting ways of circumventing such blockings, in 2022 this list will be extended to include countering massive DDoS attacks, countering computer attacks and countering IP-Spoofing (attacks aimed at concealing the attacker's true IP address).
The Center is also planning to "increase the amount of traffic that passes through the information system and through filters," Khutortsev said.
According to the Center's data, cybersecurity systems that filter traffic to remove prohibited content have this year been installed on over 500 hubs, which filter 73% of broadband Internet traffic and 100% of mobile traffic, and more than 1,000 will be installed next year to cover 95% of broadband traffic.
Also, there are plans next year to create a domestic service which would show traffic movement on the Internet. "One of the core specialisms of our monitoring center is to efficiently use the mechanisms, the tools that we obtain, the information we gather. Not least, in order to help and support the community, telecommunications operators, and so on. Next year we are planning to create a number of public web services, primarily to display information on how routers are working in the Russian segment, services such as Looking Glass and suchlike," Khutortsev said.
The sovereign Runet legislation, a package of legal amendments regarding information and communications, which came into effect on November 1, 2019, aims to create an independent national infrastructure to ensure routing if cut off from foreign root servers. In cases of threats to the functioning of the Internet on the territory of the Russian Federation, Roskomnadzor may, through its Main Radiofrequency Center, centrally control traffic through the center for monitoring and control of the telecommunications network.