- Major Russian Internet Services Have Been Instructions on How to Block VPNs
- Russia’s Digital Technology Ministry highlighted some “important limitations”
- Attempts to limit VPN use may have led to widespread banking disruption
Russia’s Ministry of Digital Development has reportedly instructed the country’s major Internet service providers on how to detect and block VPN connections, warning against some “significant limitations.”
As local media outlet RBC reported on Sunday (April 5), the Ministry, Maksut Shadaev, shared the instructions with more than 20 companies, including Yandex, VK and two local marketplaces (Wildberries and Ozon).
These platforms must restrict VPN users by April 15, or they could lose their IT accreditation.
Earlier in the week, Shadaev shared a plan to “reduce VPN usage” with new blocking obligations for companies, along with new fines and fees for VPN users in the country. It then ordered all local mobile operators to disable Apple ID payments, supposedly to make it harder to pay for a VPN subscription, starting April 1.
The first repercussions of this latest wave of VPN restrictions are already appearing. Telegram CEO Pavel Durov, whose service is currently blocked in Russia, argued that authorities’ attempt to block VPNs “triggered a massive banking failure,” in a post shared on X on Saturday.
As reported by independent news outlet Meduza, data from Russian outage tracking service Sboi.rf (Outage.ru) confirmed that the banking outage occurred on April 3, along with another wave of outages on several websites and applications linked to local banks, telecom operators, satellite companies and other Russian organizations.
How Russian companies are expected to detect VPNs
According to Shadaev’s guidelines, companies should follow a three-stage process to determine whether a VPN connection is enabled on users’ devices.
- Identify the device IP addressesthen compare it to a list of known Russian IPs and blocked addresses.
- Check the use of VPN when accessing the company’s own application in users iOS and Android devices.
- Check Using VPN on devices running operating systems other than iOS and Android (Windows, MacOS, Linux).
The document also notes that a whitelist will be created to exclude legitimate commercial VPNs and corporate proxy services from blocking.
It also recommends against continuously monitoring VPN connections on users’ devices, warning that doing so would “negatively affect traffic consumption and battery life,” RBC reported.
VPN detection limits and workarounds
Authorities make no secret that there are several challenges and limitations in VPN detection.
Specifically, the guide warns that carrying out the second stage of verification is harder on iPhones since “access to system parameters on iOS is significantly limited.”
executing a VPN on a router or in virtual machines It also makes VPN detection more difficult, if not impossible.
Bearing split tunnel enabled can also help. That is a feature that allows users to select the applications or websites to route through the VPN tunnel. In this case, testing on a single active network will not be sufficient.
The authorities also noted that new VPN services They continue to be developed, which means that not all IP addresses linked to virtual private network (VPN) services are known.
We recommend that citizens consider these limitations as the north star to follow to overcome repression. Where possible, we suggest installing your VPN on a router or virtual machine, enabling split tunneling, and connecting to newly launched VPN servers.
Some VPN providers have been expanding their censorship-resistant features lately, precisely to address the latest wave of restrictions in Iran and Russia. These include Russia-based Amnezia VPN (and its recently updated AmneziaWG protocol), Windscribe VPN, and NymVPN.
TechRadar reached out to these vendors to find out if their apps are still working as usual and if there are other possible solutions. We will update the page when more information is available.
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