Hook to USA and Europe
Traffic from the Far East does not always go directly through Russia – it often makes a detour to the United States, then to Europe, and only then to Moscow. Therefore, the data of residents of this region is easier to intercept as they come to “non-hostile” countries, internet experts told socialbites.ca.
. RU/.РФ domains .
According to him, in this process, data may even turn into the USA “by traveling the world with cables at the bottom of two oceans”.
CorpSoft24 Chief Engineer Mikhail Sergeev said hooks on the traffic route are related to several factors.
“First, for technical reasons, such as insufficient bandwidth or the lack of direct supply lines between the Far East and Moscow,” said the expert.
Sergeev called the second reason why the decision to “leave” to the USA and Europe was due to financial concerns, because using foreign routes may be cheaper than laying new communication lines within Russia.
However, the expert warned that such traffic transfers to third countries should not be evaluated only in terms of savings.
“Such bypass paths can be used to provide high reliability and network resilience in case one of the paths becomes blocked or unavailable,” he added.
Soros aid and telegram from Moscow
The reasons for the existence of such an unusual Internet infrastructure in the Far East lie in the peculiarities of network development in the cities of the region. In the 1990s, American companies and nonprofits helped develop the Internet.
One such NGO was Open Society, a foundation of the American financier George Soros, with an official representation in Russia.
In 1992, the American company Sprint, based on businesses in the Far East, created a regional data transmission network Rosprint / Global One, and in 1993 Soros financed the creation of the first Russian satellite Internet, all from the same Sprint. Regional authorities supported the development of new projects.
However, until the end of the first half of the 1990s, most Russians still did not have access to the Internet. The network existed in some institutions, for example, the Far Eastern Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
In 1994, the American institution “Council for International Research and Exchanges” (IREX) established the Electronic Mail Center at the Far East State Technical University (FESTU). It was the first free internet access point in the area.
This access is also granted to the American organization Project Harmony Inc. funded by. As a result, nine Internet centers were opened in six cities of the Far East.
In 1996, Soros’ Open Society signed a memorandum with the Russian State Committee for Higher Education on the creation of large Internet centers in 33 universities in the country. These were computer rooms for 100 people each. Such a center was also opened in Vladivostok, on the territory of the Far Eastern State Technical University.
The project of direct connection of Internet cables on the territory of Russia in the Far East was implemented only in the late 2000s.
Before that, Russians in the Far East almost always depended on existing cables from other countries, which could travel by water to the United States and then to European countries.
“In the 90s, such routes were practically the rule due to the lack of the necessary channels, but in the 2000s, with the advent of TransTeleCom, which laid most of the optics along the railway, as well as Andrey Vorobyov, director of the Coordination Center of Rostelecom’s backbone networks and domains .RU/.РФ , the three major mobile operators said that a significant portion of the data travels internally.
However, the Internet in the region is still quite centralized, and connections between major operators are not found only in Moscow, Mikhail Sysoev, a specialist in the network management department of hosting provider REG.RU, told Gazeta.ru.
“So some connection sessions go a long way than what seems logical and fast,” he added.
Data danger
Andrey Vorobyov, director of the Coordination Center for .RU/.РФ domains, warned that currently operators continue to use routes for traffic through third countries to save money, but that this poses a potential danger to user data.
“Today, the reasons why Russian traffic is circumventing are mostly commercial. “International backbone operators have very wide bandwidth channels and offer more attractive tariffs for data transmission despite longer distances.”
Vorobyov also pointed out that some Russian operators, even after all these years, may not have peer-to-peer agreements that allow traffic to be sent directly from Russian territory.
CorpSoft24 Chief Engineer Mikhail Sergeev noted that the danger of connecting via other countries is real.
“If traffic passes through third countries, there is a risk of interference and information leaks. The expert also said that some of these countries could be considered “hostile” to Russia and more prone to espionage and cyber attacks.
According to Sergeev, they are currently trying to prevent such interference with additional data protection technologies.
“Most communications providers follow privacy rules and protect their customers’ data. In addition, there are technologies and security measures that can help protect users’ personal information on the Internet, such as data encryption and the use of virtual private networks (VPNs), ”the expert added.
However, the situation with traffic passing through third countries is slowly changing, and more and more operators are trying to make all connections through Russian territory, continued Sergeev.
“This is due to both the increasing role of the internet in our lives and the changing political situation. “Today, the passage of internal Russian traffic through Europe and the United States is undesirable for information security reasons,” he said.