PRESS: Watchdog bans some IP addresses of VK, OK, Yandex, Facebook

MOSCOW, Apr 27 (PRIME) -- The Russian communications service added several IP addresses of Internet giant Yandex and social networks VKontakte, Odnoklassniki, Facebook and Twitter to the register of banned websites, but later removed them from the list, business daily Kommersant reported on Friday.

The blocking of these IP addresses, along with those of Internet company Yahoo and online portal LiveInternet, was reported by Telegram channel RKNShowtime, which automatically monitors a growing list of closed resources. The information was confirmed by website Usher2.Club, which also tracks the register.

An IP address of VKontakte was blocked upon a request of the Prosecutor General’s Office. Besides, the register of banned information had an IP address of Odnoklassniki, five IP addresses of Yandex, three addresses of Twitter, five of Facebook, 14 of Amazon, 29 of Microsoft and 33 of Google.

Later on, IP addresses of the big Internet companies were deleted from the register.

The communications service started closing the IP addresses used by Telegram to skirt its blocking, which caused troubles on third-party resources.

Usher2.Club’s founder Filipp Kulin said “about a hundred” of IP addresses were blocked. The register also contains MSK-IX, the so-called server of time, the biggest Internet exchange point in Russia, responsible for synchronizing internal watches on computers and network equipment.

“If (the blocking) is intentional, there will be a second stroke, on critical (infrastructure): banking networks, routers, DNS system…I don’t think it was (done by employees of the authority). Most likely, the communications service was hacked,” Kulin said.

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