Codebreaker

Is Russia cracking down on the Internet?

John Moe Apr 13, 2011

Last week, we reported on the outage of blogging site Live Journal that left President Dmitry Medvedev miffed. This week, Reuters is reporting that there may be many more hacks to come this year, as Russia gears up for a presidential election and the world is watching how the Internet is playing a role in the Middle East unrest. From Reuters: The United States, itself wary of Russian and Chinese cyber attacks, said in its 2010 human rights report that Internet systems route Russian web traffic to the Federal Security Services (FSB), the main successor to the Soviet-era KGB. The head of the FSB special communications center, Alexander Andreyechkin, said last week uncontrolled use of Gmail, Hotmail and Skype were “a major threat to national security” and called for access to the encrypted communication providers.

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