Block Telegram at any cost

The whole world is watching the opposition of the Russian state and the small Telegram program. No matter how funny it looked to an outside observer, but for Telegram users in Russia, this is a show with its own participation. Apparently, the authorities have set a tough task for Roskomnadzor: to block Telegram at any cost.

Four days ago, Alexander Zharov answered a journalist's question : “Imagine, fighting is going on, and you say:“ When will you start the attack? ”. Well, soon. When I attack, I won't say. ”

Now the attack has begun.
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Step 1: Block IP

Yesterday, Roskomnadzor banned 655 352 IP addresses of Amazon - all in order to prevent the messenger from working in Russia: “We have an unloading Amazon subnet, which Telegram has switched to,” said the head of department, Alexander Zharov. - The fact is that the third point of the court order instructs Roskomnadzor and other legal entities not to create conditions for technical access to the blocked messenger. We execute the court decision. ” It is reported that Amazon 52.58.0.0/15, 18.196.0.0/15, 18.194.0.0/15 and 35.156.0.0/14 subnets are under blocking. Later the subnet 18.184.0.0/15 was added to the registry.

In addition to Amazon, the subnet of the 35.192.0.0/12 subnet containing more than a million Google IP addresses got into the unloading of the registry of prohibited sites for providers. Thus, in one day on April 16, 2018, Roskomnadzor blocked in Russia approximately 0.04% of all IP addresses in the IPv4 address space (2³² addresses).

Alexander Zharov does not intend to surrender and is ready to block a large number of IP addresses : “There is a battle between the projectile and armor — we detect the IP addresses on which the messenger is migrating and block them. At first he used about 9000 own IP addresses, we sent them to block. Then he switched to the Amazon subnet (about 600,000 IP), they were also sent to the block. Now Telegram has moved to the IP addresses of another resource (about 540,000), which will also be blocked in the near future. We expect that by the end of the day it will produce results. ”

On April 17, another 35.184.0.0/13 Google subnet was added to the registry with 524,286 IP addresses.

At first, some users complained about the unavailability of the service, but in the second half of the day, many Telegram earned without VPN and other bypass methods of blocking. So far, the lock has not affected the number of views of publications in popular Russian-language Telegram channels . For the largest of them, the number of subscribers even increased yesterday.

Many users have switched to using proxy services, which can be specified in the Telegram settings, as well as VPN services. But now Roskomnadzor is also trying to disable them.

Step 2: Proxy Blocking

Yesterday, notifications about restrictions on access to the resource were sent to the owners of the most popular proxy services of Telegram.

The owner of one of the popular proxy services, Alexander Litreev, published the text of a letter from Roskomnadzor . The letter says that the blocking of the resource is “based on the requirements of the General Prosecutor’s Office of the Russian Federation, as containing appeals to mass riots, extremist activities, participation in mass (public) events held in violation of the established procedure.”


Apparently, similar letters were received by the owners of other well-known proxy services.

The owner of the proxy service from the company Vee Security politically incorrectly responded to the notice from Roskomnadzor: “Let us comment on this shit a bit later. Proxy, of course, continues to work, and can put their letters to their cheeks, ” said Alexander Lytriev.

On the evening of April 16, Telegram began sending push notifications to users asking them to enter the application to update the settings.

Step 3: VPN Lock

A proxy can be specified in the Telegram settings and it will only work for this application, and VPN is a separate service that can allow all phone traffic through a remote server. In this case, all applications on the phone, including the browser, work around the Russian networks, where Roskomnadzor restrictions apply. The popularity of VPN applications in Russia has recently grown tenfold .

As to the owners of proxy services, similar notifications are sent to the owners of the VPN node . The ILF again refers to the fact that the resource (in this case, the VPN node) “contains calls for mass riots, extremist activities, participation in mass (public) events held in violation of the established procedure.”

“Roskomnadzor made an attack on our service,” reports Vladislav Zdolnikov, one of the developers of the @TgVPNbot VPN service, “absolutely by lawlessness — allegedly, our VPN nodes contain“ extremism ”, with the http protocol indicating that the answer nothing. This is definitely a revenge for the free proxy service for Telegram. Of course, this will not stop us; not only will we not abandon him, but we will work on him even more. We almost had time to prepare a solution for this case, but since “almost” we will roll it out “as is” and tell about it in the bot. We apologize for this situation from all our users, despite the fact that we are not to blame for it. Thank you for your understanding, patience and support. ”

According to experts, attempts by Roxomnadzor to limit access to a VPN will not lead to success: “VPN cannot be blocked, it’s just a technology, and it cannot be canceled by Roskomnadzor’s order or the State Duma’s law,” explains B2Chain partner Anton Merkurov. - Therefore, if they block, only some big big addresses. Yes, the segment was finally broken, so something large and big can be blocked, the rest will not touch it. If it does, the VPN will also change their addresses, and as a result, Roskomnadzor will have to block the entire Internet. ”

Step 4: Remove Telegram from Application Directories

On April 16, Roskomnadzor sent requests to the App Store and Google Play requesting to remove the Telegram application from the application catalog.

At the same time, the requirement to remove Telegram APK files is directed to alternative hosting sites. For example, APK Mirror reported about receiving such a request. The owners of the service are at a loss.

Collateral damage

Collateral damage eng. collateral damage (war euphemism) - damage caused by chance during an attack of an intentional target. Usually collateral damage refers to the accidental killing of civilians or the destruction of civilian property.

Due to the blocking of nearly two million addresses , various civil services have suffered. Reported failures in large retail companies, banks from the top 20, private clinics.

On the evening of April 16, Viber reported that some Russian users had problems with calls. According to Downdetector statistics , the peak of Viber crash reports came yesterday from 19:00 to 23:00. Users reported no connection (77%) and the inability to send a message (22%). This morning, the number of error messages in Viber began to grow again.

The company is failing to block the Roskomnadzor Amazon IP addresses, which are used in Viber.

Vladimir Kobzev, the founder of the Moscow Bird Delivery service, wrote that they had an AWS website, but Amazon launched a hot support service in connection with the situation - and now it quickly helps restore sites that have suffered due to Roskomnadzor's actions. “I believe that even with bad laws and crooked hands, it is very important to respect the procedural aspects when working overseen bodies. Of course, we will change the address (we wanted to change it right now because of the nuances of the update system, so we can’t do it only in the morning). And of course everything will work (when the DNS record is updated). But even one missed order is unacceptable. And it turns out that we will not work 14 hours. This is very bad, of course, ”Kobzev wrote on his Facebook and added that he intends to sue Roskomnadzor.

“The blocking by Roskomnadzor of the Telegram messenger accidentally hurt a part of the servers of our platform,” says the official group of the English language school Skyeng. In addition, crashes were noted by Russian users of online games Guild Wars 2, Vainglory and Guns of Boom, the cloud-based storage service for pCloud files, and many others.

Telegram benefits

Strange as it may sound, but the principled position of Pavel Durov and his refusal to cooperate with the Russian special services looks beneficial to investors of the Telegram Open Network. Forbes magazine writes that blocking Telegram for refusing to provide encryption keys to the authorities in Russia will have a positive effect on the ICO company.

“Telegram, the instant messenger that the ubiquitous anarcho-libertanians of the cryptocurrency world prefer to use, is banned by the Russian government,” writes Forbes. - App fans will not be affected by this news. In fact, this is a plus. This proves that the Russian founder, Pavel Durov, who now lives in exile somewhere between Dubai and the Caribbean Islands, has maintained his position against the Russian FSB, a top intelligence agency that requires Telegram to disclose its encryption keys to law enforcement. ”

"Current events in Russia can increase Telegram's investment attractiveness," agrees Nolan Bauerle, director of research at CoinDesk. Now Telegram is going to issue its own cryptocurrency for accredited investors. Then this cryptocurrency will be available to a wide range of users who can buy and sell services of the Telegram Open Network for it. If Pavel Durov gives the FSB access to encryption keys, then for investors this can serve as a signal that the cryptocurrency has been compromised, and here we are talking about billions of dollars.

The situation is all the more interesting because recently Ilya Perekopsky was appointed vice-president of Telegram, whom Pavel Durov had earlier accused of trying to steal Telegram . From the point of view of conspiracy the situation looks as if the FSB has already colluded with Pavel Durov, and Telegram locks are just a show for investors to dilute them into billions of investments in cryptocurrency, which will then be “nationalized” by Russian special services.

Pavel Durov himself, after the start of active actions by Roskomnadzor, once again confirmed that the company considers the decision on blocking to be illegal: “We consider the decision on blocking to be unconstitutional and we will continue to defend the right to privacy of Russians’ correspondence. ”

Perhaps, for any public service, the protection of its users is beneficial in the long term, even if it leads to short-term losses to the audience, blockages, fines and lawsuits. The case of Telegram especially clearly demonstrates this long-term benefit, which is understood by both the founders of the service and investors.

“Historically, cryptography has existed for governments. It was used mainly for military purposes. And the technology was as secret as any communications code or weapon technology. Now we see that cryptography is becoming available to everyone, writes Forbes. “This is exactly what the cryptocurrency revolution is based on: using cryptography to send messages and pay for services, sometimes completely bypassing the government and large corporations.”

UPD 12:00. There were interruptions in the work of the Roskomnadzor site due to a possible DDoS attack.

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