Russia proposes to place root Internet name servers in BRICS countries
At a session on October 26, the Russian Security Council instructed the Ministry of Telecom and Mass Communications (MinComSvyaz) and the Foreign Ministry to begin discussion on the creation of “a system of backup DNS root name servers, independent of the control of ICANN, IANA and VeriSign, and capable of servicing the requests of users from the listed countries in the case of faults or targeted interventions”. These servers would be exclusively for BRICS member-states (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa).
Information on this instruction was included in the Security Council’s session protocol, signed on November 5 by Russian President Vladimir Putin, of which RBC has a copy whose authenticity has been confirmed by a federal official.
“… the increased capabilities of western countries to carry out offensive operations in information space, and their willingness to use them, are a serious threat to Russia’s security. The dominance of the US and several EU countries persists in matters of internet control,” the document explains.
The Russian authorities have repeatedly stressed that ICANN is de facto controlled by the US, and have tried to bring about changes in the way decisions are made in ICANN. Notably, as presidential aide Igor Shchegolev told RBC in an interview, Russia insists that governments’ role in controlling the internet must be clearly prescribed and not simply advisory.
In 2014, MinComSvyaz held drills relating to the Russian internet’s resilience to external threats, testing the possibility of violating the addressing system, Internet Technical Center (TCI) CEO Alexei Platonov told Kommersant in an interview. “Under drill conditions, the DNS network functioned inadequately due to the fact that information on the domain .ru was taken out of the ICANN database. TCI, MSK-IX and other telecommunications companies should be able to maintain the operability of the national national internet segment, naturally, on the level of a model network,” Platonov said, expounding on the conditions of the drill. He noted that with “mirrors” of the DNS root name server in Russia, it is possible to get the system to continue to function: “ICANN takes domain information off the root name servers, but it is preserved on our server. And if the Russian internet is confined to this server, everything will function as it used to. This is what was worked on in the drill.” However, this did not refer to constant system operation, but to extreme situations, one of the drill participants clarified.
“The main question for the authors of the initiative to create their own DNS root name servers in BRICS is – why is this even necessary? The creation of backup infrastructures [mirrors] for the servers of the highest level of .ru and .rf was announced by TCI representatives in the autumn of 2014, and this task has been dealt with. As for the idea of creating our own infrastructures, backups of the global DNS, such an approach would directly or indirectly facilitate the fragmentation of the global network. It is especially strange that movement in this direction is being activated in parallel with the development of initiatives to construct a digital economy in Russia. Such a movement has a mutually exclusive nature,” commented PIR Center consultant Oleg Demidov.