REQUEST IS A BAD PLAN: Ukraine asks ICANN to revoke Russian domains and shut down DNS root servers

Intro: MESSING with countries' supposedly sovereign country-code top-level domains... if that were to happen, a lot more countries than just China and Russia would secede from the common-consensus-Internet that allows us to all talk to each other

Ukraine's request to shut down the root name servers inside Russia "would make connectivity spotty for many users inside Russia, but mostly regular folks, not government or military users, . .the actions "would have little to no effect on the Russian government or military," pointing out that what Ukraine requests "is exactly the attack the Russians practiced for last July, which means their defenses are probably at optimum readiness right about now.

[.  ] it's a bad plan in the long term because it "would set the precedent that small industry associations in Los Angeles and Amsterdam would be playing arbiter in international conflicts, and messing with countries' supposedly sovereign country-code top-level domains. And if that were to happen, a lot more countries than just China and Russia would secede from the common-consensus-Internet that allows us to all talk to each other." 

 

 

Ukraine asks ICANN to revoke Russian domains and shut down DNS root servers

Expert: Cutting DNS links would harm Russian people but have little impact on gov't.

(Image credit: Yuichiro Chino)

 

Jon Brodkin -

Ars Technica | 3/2/2022, 12:33 PM

"A Ukraine government official on Monday asked the nonprofit group that oversees the Internet's Domain Name System (DNS) to shut down DNS root servers in Russia and revoke Russian domains such as .ru, .рф, and .su. The letter to ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) was posted here, and ICANN has confirmed that it received the letter.

. . .Sent days after Russia's invasion of Ukraine began, the letter said that Russia's "atrocious crimes have been made possible mainly due to the Russian propaganda machinery using websites continuously spreading disinformation, hate speech, promoting violence and hiding the truth regarding the war in Ukraine. Ukrainian IT infrastructure has undergone numerous attacks from the Russian side impeding citizens' and government's ability to communicate."

. . .The letter was sent by Mykhailo Fedorov, Ukraine's vice prime minister and minister of digital transformation, to ICANN CEO Göran Marby. "Apart from these measures, I will be sending a separate request to RIPE NCC asking to withdraw the right to use all IPv4 and IPv6 addresses by all Russian members of RIPE NCC (LIRs-Local Internet Registries), and to block the DNS root servers that it is operating," Fedorov wrote. RIPE NCC (Réseaux IP Européens Network Coordination Centre) is the regional Internet registry.