The large-scale outage affecting RuNet on January 30 was traced to an error during the update of a DNSSEC key. This assessment comes from the Coordination Center for the domains .ru and .рф, which oversees stability for national domain names.
Officials said the investigation into the incident is ongoing and collecting evidence from affected services and operators.
It is already evident that the root cause involved flawed software used to generate encryption keys, the publication notes, underscoring that outages can hinge on software quality and update procedures rather than external interference.
The Domain Center also emphasized that DNSSEC, like all technology tools, requires continuous improvement and vigilant testing to address newly discovered issues and to prevent similar failures in the future.
Earlier, Artem Geller, the chief developer of the Kremlin.ru site, commented that a major failure affecting the .ru domain had happened the previous night. He stressed that such events are unlikely to be caused by malicious external actions. Among the possible factors he cited for the “decline” in Runet were human error and incorrect operation of algorithms.
There have also been previous Russian incidents involving prolonged DDoS activity that extended for about two years, highlighting ongoing security and reliability challenges faced by critical online infrastructure.
Overall, experts call for stronger governance of DNSSEC key management, more robust software development practices, and heightened monitoring to minimize the risk of future outages and to ensure the resilience of the national internet ecosystem.