Category: Uncategorized
Russia will act like China and have censored firewall
Russia plans to ‘unplug’ from internet
https://informationbuzzer.com/2019/02/11/russia-plans-to-unplug-from-internet/ and
https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-47198426
Russia is planning to briefly disconnect from the internet as part of planning for a future cyber-war.
The test will mean data passing between Russian citizens and organisations stays inside the nation rather than being routed internationally.
A law mandating technical changes needed to operate independently was introduced to Russia’s parliament last year.
The test is due to happen before 1 April but no exact date has been set.
Major disruption
The draft law, called the Digital Economy National Program, requires Russia’s ISPs to ensure that it can operate in the event of foreign powers acting to isolate the country online.
Nato and its allies have threatened to sanction Russia over the cyber-attacks and other online interference which it is regularly accused of instigating.
The measures outlined in the law include Russia building its own version of the net’s address system, known as DNS, so it can operate if links to these internationally-located servers are cut.
Currently, 12 organisations oversee the root servers for DNS and none of them are in Russia. However many copies of the net’s core address book do already exist inside Russia suggesting its net systems could keep working even if punitive action was taken to cut it off.
The test is also expected to involve ISPs demonstrating that they can direct data to government-controlled routing points. These will filter traffic so that data sent between Russians reaches its destination, but any destined for foreign computers is discarded.
Eventually the Russian government wants all domestic traffic to pass through these routing points. This is believed to be part of an effort to set up a mass censorship system akin to that seen in China, which tries to scrub out prohibited traffic.
Russian news organisations reported that the nation’s ISPs are broadly backing the aims of the draft law but are divided on how to do it. They believe the test will cause “major disruption” to Russian internet traffic, reports tech news website ZDNet.
The Russian government is providing cash for ISPs to modify their infrastructure so the redirection effort can be properly
Google Removes website pages that Europeans wanted about how the Google search engine works.
Notice of European data protection removal from Google Search
February 5, 2019
To: Webmaster of <your domain>
Due to a request under the data protection law in Europe, Google can no longer show one or more pages from your site in Google Search results. This only affects responses to some search queries for names or other personal identifiers that might appear on your pages. Only results on European versions of Google are affected. No action is required from you.
What you should know:
1. These pages haven’t been blocked entirely from our search results. They’ve only been blocked on certain searches for names on European versions of Google Search. These pages will continue to appear for other searches.
2. We aren’t disclosing which queries have been affected.
In many cases, affected queries don’t relate to the name of any person mentioned prominently on the page.For example, the name might only appear in a comment section.
3. You can notify us of concerns. you believe warrants a reversal, you can notify Google. Please note that while we read all requests, we do not always respond. Only the registered site owner can access this form.
EU Privacy Removal
https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/eu-privacy-webmaster
GOV cyber workers are back Checking for hacks
Figuring out how to adjust the multimillion-dollar contracts
to upgrade and secure federal IT systems that have spent more than a month not checked.
By Joseph Marks The Washington Post January 28, 2019
Thousands of federal cyber workers are returning to their posts.
It will take them days or weeks to pore through security logs to assess how much damage the shutdown did to the security of government computer networks and the sensitive data they hold. The attacks did not abate because the government was closed: One cyber manager who worked without pay during the shutdown described an uptick in attacks on his agency — including phishing emails containing malware, attempts to reset employee passwords and attempts to trick users into downloading malicious software cloaked as a legitimate update.
Also on the docket: Figuring out how to adjust the multimillion-dollar contracts to upgrade and secure federal IT systems that have spent more than a month on ice.
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