The expert explained the mechanism of the largest failure in the Russian segment of the Internet

“The criticality of the situation determines the time of failure”

Russia experienced a massive internet outage on Tuesday evening. Everyone is talking about a “massive breakdown” in the RU domain zone. According to messages on social networks, popular sites and applications of various services did not open. Journalists note that many sites with the .ru domain do not open in Europe.

According to a statement by the Ministry of Digital Development, work is now underway to restore Russian DNS hosting services. However, no one is immune from repetition of such situations in the future. We turned to a cybersecurity expert to explain the cause of the failure. Our expert called what was happening not a hacker attack, but a software glitch.

“The situation is large-scale, and the criticality of the situation will be determined by the time of the breakdown,” Pavel Myasoedov, director and partner of the IT reserve (Intellectual reserve), explained to MK. – If it lasts 30 minutes, an hour, 1, 5 – it’s one story. If this continues for more than 5 hours, then the blow to the business may be very serious.

Each object on the global world wide web has a unique IP address. At your computer, at the server on which the site is located, at any digital camera or smart refrigerator, at any object that is connected to the Internet. At the same time, when we want to go to a site known to us, we enter text characters – the so-called site address. Then it is sent to an intermediate layer called DNS hosting. Next, the site’s address is matched with unique IP addresses in this DNS hosting, which is a notebook, after which it sends your computer directly to where you wanted to go.

When DNS hosting fails, our computer cannot access the desired website because it does not know which IP address to go to. However, the sites remain operational. Moreover, there are several DNS hosting services in Russia. If, for example, one half fails, then the other half should work. Depending on the Internet provider, your browser knocks on either one hosting or another. That’s why some sites opened today and some didn’t. Or the site opens from a mobile connection, but not via Wi-Fi.

When such falls occur, it is the general public who experience the inconvenience first. The business community is experiencing payment problems. But the data remains untouched.

– How often do such incidents occur, in your estimation?

– Once a year, once every six months. They have also been abroad. The question is that this time today the failure was completely large-scale, because almost all “.ru” domain names immediately ceased to be available. And maybe the failures are related to the DNS security extension (DNSSec). This extension analyzes data before sending it to the user. That is, you knocked on the site, DNS hosting checked the data that goes to your computer and after that you continued your session. This is a kind of protective mechanism for DNS hosting. This is not a hacker attack, but a malfunction in the software of one or another extension. This also happens in the international first-level domain name com.

– Have you personally suffered from today’s failure?

– My transactions for today were already completed. If we had not managed to make some payments, it would have been very bad. Fortunately, the failure occurred after our working day ended. Otherwise, I can’t access any sites. But these are my personal problems.