- Major Russian internet services have been instructed on how to block VPNs
- Russia’s Ministry of Digital highlighted a few “significant limitations”
- Attempts to limit VPN use may have caused a widespread banking outage
Russia’s Ministry of Digital Development has reportedly instructed the country’s major internet services providers on how to detect and block VPN connections, warning against a few “significant limitations.”
As reported by local news outlet RBC 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 may lose their IT accreditation.
Earlier in the week, Shadaev shared a plan to “reduce VPN usage” with new blocking obligations for companies, alongside new fines and fees for VPN users in the country. He then ordered all local mobile operators to disable Apple ID payments, allegedly to make paying for a VPN subscription harder, starting April 1.
The first repercussions of this latest wave of VPN restrictions are already showing themselves. Telegram CEO, Pavel Durov, whose service is currently being blocked in Russia, argued that the 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 the Russian outage-tracking service Sboi.rf (Outage.ru) confirmed the banking outage occurred on April 3, alongside another wave of disruptions on several websites and apps linked with local banks, telecom operators, satellite companies, and other Russian organizations.
How Russian companies are expected to detect VPNs
As per Shadaev’s guidelines, companies must follow a three-stage process to determine whether a VPN connection is enabled on users’ devices.
- Identify the device’s IP addresses, then compare it against a list of known Russian IPs and blocked addresses.
- Check for the use of VPN when accessing the company’s own app on the users’ iOS and Android devices.
- Check VPN usage 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 business VPNs and corporate proxy services from the blocking.
It also recommends against continuous monitoring of VPN connections on users’ devices, warning that doing so would “negatively impact traffic consumption and battery life,” RBC reported.
VPN detection limits and workarounds
Authorities aren’t hiding that there are several challenges and limitations in VPN detection.
Specifically, the guide warns that performing the second stage of verification is more difficult on iPhones as “access to system parameters on iOS is significantly limited.”
Running a VPN on a router or in virtual machines also makes VPN detection harder, if not impossible.
Having split tunneling enabled can also help. That’s a feature that allows users to select the apps or websites to route through the VPN tunnel. In this case, testing over a single active network won’t be enough.
Authorities also flagged that new VPN services keep being developed, meaning that not all IP addresses linked to virtual private network (VPN) services are known.
We recommend that citizens look at these limitations as the north star to follow for navigating the crackdown. Whenever possible, we then suggest installing their VPN on a router or virtual machine, enabling split tunneling, and connecting to newly launched VPN servers.
Some VPN providers have been scaling up their censorship-resistant features lately, exactly to cope with 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 contacted these providers to know whether their apps are still working as usual and if there are any other potential workarounds. We will update the page when more information becomes available.
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chiara.castro@futurenet.com (Chiara Castro)
