Roskomnadzor won, Telegram survived. Roskomnadzor vs Telegram
MOSCOW, June 28 – RIA Novosti. The head of Roskomnadzor Alexander Zharov and the founder of Telegram Pavel Durov finally “heard” each other: the messenger was included in the register of organizers of information dissemination after several days of public confrontation between the parties, which became the reason for heated discussions in Russia.
Last Friday, the head of Roskomnadzor called on the Telegram team and Durov personally to comply with Russian legislation, providing the agency with information to be included in the register of organizers of information dissemination. Zharov indicated that there is little time left to comply with the department’s requirements, and if they continue to ignore the messenger, the messenger will be blocked on the territory of the Russian Federation.
He later explained that the agency requires Telegram to have only five identifiers for inclusion in the register, and there is no talk of opening access to users’ correspondence.
“Registration data about the Telegram publishing company is not a secret and is available to anyone in open sources... If the regulator’s wishes are really limited to this, I have no objection to using this data to register Telegram Messenger LLP in the register of information dissemination organizers,” wrote Durov on Wednesday on his VKontakte page.
The head of Roskomnadzor was satisfied with his answer and the messenger was promptly entered into the appropriate register. “I am sure that other international communication services should do the same. As for the laws of Russia, they are mandatory for all companies operating in Russian jurisdiction,” Zharov emphasized.
However, experts believe that it is too early to put an end to this issue.
Where it all started
As reported by the media, Roskomnadzor sent a letter to Telegram in early May with a request to provide data for the company to be included in the register of organizers of information dissemination. The agency even then warned the company about possible blocking resource in the Russian Federation.
According to the Law “On Information, information technology and on the protection of information", after the department’s request, the organizer of the dissemination of information (any service for communication between users - ed.) is obliged to provide his contact information within five working days. If the data is not provided, Roskomnadzor sends a second notification within 15 days, after this service is blocked.
In mid-June, the head of Roskomnadzor told reporters that he intended to publicly address Durov within a week, since Telegram management did not respond to official letters.
Durov replied
Durov followed the example of his opponent and spoke out on the same day on his VKontakte page. In his opinion, blocking Telegram, which is neutral to the Russian Federation, is not in the interests of the country, since other similar messengers are Whatsapp or Facebook Messenger- controlled by the USA.
All correspondence of Russian officials and other sensitive data via WhatsApp/Viber will be transferred to US-controlled clouds Apple iCloud And Google Drive, he wrote.
At the same time, blocking the mentioned services is not on the agenda in Russia, Durov complained. According to the Roskomnadzor registry, there is indeed no information about WhatsApp, Viber and Facebook Messenger.
The head of Roskomnadzor, in turn, stated in response that Facebook (which owns Whatsapp and Facebook Messenger) independently makes decisions regarding the implementation of Russian legislation and dialogue with the Russian authorities. At the same time, he accused the founder of Telegram of being “neutral towards terrorists and criminals who use his messenger and completely ignoring security ordinary users Telegram".
Durov did not agree with him and cited statistics on blocking terrorists on Telegram. Thus, since the beginning of June alone, the messenger has blocked more than five thousand public channels and groups associated with the propaganda of terrorism.
The FSB threw wood on the fire
Against the background of this dispute, the FSB reported that terrorists in Russia most actively use Telegram to communicate with each other and with their curators from abroad. Moreover, according to the service, this messenger was used by the suicide bomber and his foreign curator at all stages of preparation for the terrorist attack in the St. Petersburg metro.
Durov noted that all messengers like Telegram or WhatsApp cannot be “unsafe” only for potential criminals - the encryption of these services either protects all users equally, or puts them all at risk.
At the same time, he mentioned the terrorist attacks in Paris, where disposable phones and regular SMS messages without any encryption were enough to carry them out.
Numerous experts interviewed by RIA Novosti also believed that blocking Telegram in Russia would not prevent terrorists from anonymously communicating on the Internet. In addition to this messenger, there are others popular services, and specific crypto messengers, they noted.
Independent Telegram users
Discussion of the possible blocking of the service in the country has become one of the most discussed topics in the media space - the popularity of the messenger, like its other analogues, has increased sharply. People began to look for a replacement for Telegram in case it was banned in the Russian Federation. Meanwhile, on Tuesday, the “hero of the occasion” was in first place in downloads in the AppStore.
Currently Russian Telegram audience is 6.5-7 million users. For comparison, Viber has about 50 million users in the Russian Federation, WhatsApp has more than 30 million.
At the same time, there are many government officials among Telegram users, including high level. In particular, the messenger is used by the Kremlin press service. A source in one of the ministries told RIA Novosti that after a series of scandalous publications of personal email correspondence of Russian officials carried out hacker group“Anonymous International”, also known as “Humpty Dumpty”, literally all members of the Russian government switched to Telegram.
Roskomnadzor reported on Wednesday that the agency began receiving false notifications about the inclusion of Telegram in the register of organizers of information dissemination from a number of Twitter users and owners of Telegram channels.
"Your noble impulses to register Telegram messenger without the participation of its owners is nothing more than the provision of deliberately false information to the federal executive body,” the department said in a statement.
Durov agreed
Later, Roskomnadzor nevertheless added the messenger to the register after Durov’s statement that he agreed to this procedure, but using only open data, without any additional obligations.
At the same time, Durov said that the Telegram team is not going to comply with the requirements of the Yarovaya Law, calling it “technically unrealizable.” The founder of Telegram emphasized that he can promise cooperation with the Russian regulator only in working together to remove public materials related to the propaganda of terrorism, drugs, calls for violence and child pornography, as well as to suppress spam mailings.
The point is not set
According to experts, Telegram will ultimately have to cooperate with government agencies and the dialogue between Roskomnadzor and the messenger will continue.
“The struggle between anonymity and privacy has not gone away. My work as an adviser began, in my opinion, with a scandal, when someone asked me how I see the future of Telegram, I said that sooner or later Durov will cooperate with states, or he how the resource will die, because this is an inevitable path - not now, then later, but not a single state in the world will ultimately tolerate anonymous - namely anonymous, not private - sources on its territory. This is inevitable, so it will not go anywhere" ,” German Klimenko, adviser to the President of the Russian Federation on Internet development, told RIA Novosti.
“I would not rush to put an end to the current dialogue, since the Russian authorities are doing everything possible to gain control over the communication of users in instant messengers. Currently in the State Duma there is a draft law regarding the authorization of instant messenger users by number mobile phone, and this is one of the steps for control. Therefore, I think that Roskomnadzor and messengers will communicate repeatedly about this in the future,” says Denis Kuskov, CEO of the information and analytical agency TelecomDaily.
Internet Ombudsman Dmitry Marinichev, in turn, believes that the inclusion of Telegram in the register will not change anything - the messenger is not going to comply with the requirements of Russian laws, as its founder Pavel Durov said.
"Well, we registered Telegram in the registry, and what did it do? Will it help in the fight against terrorism? If Telegram is included in the registry, it must, accordingly, comply with the laws of the Russian Federation. Durov refused to comply with them in his own post, so he should be blocked in in this case,” Marinichev told RIA Novosti.
In his opinion, the situation with Telegram showed that civil society and Runet users “are able to show their position and avoid the possibility of blocking a popular, easy-to-use resource.”
“Public opinion reacted too negatively to the possible blocking of Telegram, and now this (entering the messenger into the register - ed.) allows everyone to get out of the situation with a normal face, but nothing happened at all,” Marinichev said.
At the same time, he believes that it is necessary to raise the question of the impracticability of the laws adopted in the Internet sphere. "The question of implementing the legislation that we say is unreasonable and not very sensible remains open. It is necessary to understand that the laws that Lately accepted, are unnatural for the development of new high-tech services on the territory of the Russian Federation,” said the Internet Ombudsman.
A couple of days ago, according to official statistics alone, Roskomnadzor blocked more than 18 million IP addresses belonging to Google and Amazon. Today this figure is between 15 and 16 million, but the attempt to block the messenger for the department was never successful.
But Russian users began to experience significant problems with cloud Google services and Amazon, dozens of online stores turned out to be inaccessible and regularly crash remote servers. It has gotten to the point where a number of Russian residents are now having problems.
Why is this happening and what is Roskomnadzor doing wrong? Let's figure it out.
What is Roskomnadzor doing now?
In order for Telegram to work, Telegram Messenger LLP uses computing power Google and Amazon. For the most part this is cloud storage, and to make it clearer - remote server computers designed for processing large amounts of data.
Each such server has an IP address. Everything is like in life: Kirovsky Prospekt, st. Bauman. For servers, such addresses look like 14.123.0.12, 123.23.54.2 etc. Those. combination of four numbers through a dot in a range from 0 to 255.
Telegram uses a whole range of such addresses at once to deploy the messenger’s activities. This range is usually called subnet.
Having begun to implement the decision of the Tagansky court on , Roskomnadzor immediately blocked 18 of these subnets. That is the 18 million IP addresses that everyone is talking about.
Who suffers from this?
By blocking entire pools of addresses, RKN complicates or limits Russians’ access to services, services and sites that are not related to Telegram.
An example from life. The city administration decided to block Nekrasova Street because 10 malicious tax evaders live on it. But on this street there are more than 7 thousand apartments, in which an average of 2 people live. The result is that almost 15 thousand people suffer because of 10 offenders.
The same thing happened with IP addresses and services. Instead of Telegram being unavailable, Russian users began to notice problems on their favorite sites and services, and gamers lost access to online stores and many online games.
This is just superficial list of services that have become worse in Russia:
Roskomnadzor accidentally blocked even those IP addresses that were associated with the operation of its own website. And then a day later in Russia.
So why is RKN unable to block Telegram?
Telegram’s own servers have long been added to the list of those banned by Roskomnadzor. But the messenger still has about 4 billion IP.
Yes, that’s exactly how many free IP addresses there are on the Internet today.
As soon as RKN blocks the pool of IP addresses through which Telegram operates in Russia, the messenger “moves” to another range. So that users also switch to it, it comes to smartphones Push notification with updated settings. One tap and Telegram works again on an already unblocked subnet.
It would seem that Roskmonadzor needs to block such notifications. But it's not that simple.
Delivery of notifications in Telegram is implemented via Apple and Google servers. They do not provide selective blocking. Therefore, if RKN blocks Telegram notifications, any Push notifications from instant messengers, banking applications and everywhere else will stop working in Russia.
How long will this last?
Roskomnadzor’s strategy now looks like this: we block address ranges where Telegram activity has been detected. Immediately after blocking (which constantly affects other services), the messenger moves to another subnet and continues to work. The new range is blocked. And all over again.
Remember the figure of 4 billion IP addresses? So, if Roskomnadzor decides to block everything, it will take:
4,000,000,000 (total IP) / 18,000,000 (blocked addresses per day) = 222 days.
But this is pure mathematics. In reality, such an approach is simply impossible, since Russia will be left without the Internet. This is hardly the end goal.
What about the analogue of the “great firewall of China”?
Read more about it and what it is. What about the prospects to do similar system in Russia?
Firstly, Russian officials have repeatedly stated that they do not plan to build their own “electronic shield” in Russia.
Secondly, such a project costs VERY big money. Its deployment will take more than one year. In China, this issue was approached back in the early 2000s, and the firewall itself was launched in 2003. That is, he is already 15 years old.
Finally, even this closed internet will not prevent more or less advanced users from continuing to bypass blocking. Or do you really think that the Chinese, who really need Facebook or Instagram, can do without it? Hardly. They just have special VPNs.
What's the result? Further scenarios for the development of events?
Now Roskomnadzor has begun to selectively block IP addresses. This is good. But Telegram is not lagging behind, quickly changing the subnets it uses.
It is possible that Amazon and Google will actually kick Telegram from their servers, as was the case with the online walkie-talkie banned in Russia Zello. But the Internet does not end with these two IT giants. And the battle can continue further.
So don't relax. It won't get any better. Blocking and problems on the Internet for Russians can last a long time. Either Roskomnadzor will come up with something suddenly effective and hitherto unknown to the world, or it will refuse to block it, or Telegram will independently decide to abandon the Russian market.
Which of these seems most realistic to you?
Right, Nothing. That's how we live.
An important event for our Internet community was the beginning, which is carried out by court decision. The process is not easy and will take several months. The reason for the blocking is the refusal to provide the Russian intelligence services with technology for decrypting messages.
While the founder and owner of the company Facebook Mark Zuckerberg, humbly dressed in a suit and tie, appeared in the American Congress in order to assure lawmakers of his complete loyalty, Pavel Durov from Telegram took a defiantly defiant position regarding even the court decision. By the way, Facebook regularly reports to various European structures, without considering it shameful. What is happening with Telegram and how can this situation generally affect the state of affairs with the Internet in Russia?
Roskomnadzor did not hesitate a day. As soon as the court made its decision, the regulator immediately went on the attack, starting to block the IP addresses used by Telegram. And the count went into millions. Technically it all looks something like this.
"The IP addresses of the Telegram resource are being blocked. in this case we set up an access list so that our entire list is included in this access list and then we would deny access. Most of the time is spent determining the addresses themselves, and the blocking itself occurs quite quickly,” said Roman Medvedev, a specialist in the network technology department.
Telegram's troubles began on Friday the 13th. But the claims of the special services arose much earlier, when it became known that the organizers and perpetrators of last year’s terrorist attack on the metro in St. Petersburg coordinated their actions using this messenger. However, Telegram managers flatly refused to hand over the encryption keys.
“In this case, I would compare Telegram to an apartment building in which different people live, including terrorists. Therefore, it is quite logical that the FSB turned to the owner of the house, the administration of the messenger: terrorists live here, don’t give us the keys so that we "Have you taken your actions? He said: no, I won’t. If there had been a dialogue, I think, eventually a solution would have been found on what to do. But there is no dialogue, and therefore the messenger is blocked," said Alexander Zharov, head of Roskomnadzor.
However, the noise arose not only because of Telegram itself. The press, and even more so social networks, reported: more than 18 million IP addresses were blocked, and as a result, difficulties arose for large online stores, banks, car dealers, dental clinics, delivery services, schools in English. Now it’s difficult to say where the truth is and where the fakes are.
Roskomnadzor even opened hotline, in order to help conscientious users as quickly as possible. Moreover, the regulator itself suffered: its website opened intermittently due to a series of attacks by cybercriminals. To be fair, it is worth noting that Telegram is still holding up: there were glitches and problems with loading photo and video files, but the messenger still continues to work. From a technical point of view, completely blocking access to the scandalous resource remains a difficult task. But Roskomnadzor is not giving up. For example, he blacklisted a number of Google IP addresses, clearly making it clear that he would stop at nothing.
It's a kind of cat and mouse game. When you launch the application, the messenger accesses the addresses of the largest Internet companies, such as Google or Microsoft. From there, as experts say, it receives a configuration file, in other words, IP addresses are transferred to the smartphone, or, more simply, a kind of key. Then, with these keys, the smartphone actually opens the door leading to cloud servers, and they pass data between the user and blocked Telegram servers. That is, Roskomnadzor is fighting on several fronts at once.
First of all, the equipment of the messenger itself is blocked. The second stage is selective blocking of subnets of Amazon, Google and other foreign hosting providers. And in parallel, the Russian supervisory agency is negotiating, insisting that the same Amazon and Google refuse to service Telegram.
It is known that Google has officially refused to support technology that allows its networks to be used to bypass blocking, including at the state level. However, Telegram does not intend to give up: it sends out IP addresses, and the catch-up continues.
“The list of addresses can actually change constantly during the work process. Those IP addresses that are blocked are actually the service that was there, it can simply be destroyed, and they are taken out of circulation, that is, in principle, no one needs them anymore ". As a result, it turns out that new and new ones are created. There is a constant switching between them," said Maxim Bolyshev, deputy director of the department at R-Style Softlab.
This is not the first time that Roskomnadzor has demonstrated decisiveness. The Linked In network has already been blocked in Russia. The recent conflict around the Internet radio Zello, which, like Telegram, began to use Amazon addresses, has been heard. And as a result, Amazon itself invited its client to part ways. In addition, BlackBerry, IEMO and Line instant messengers, as well as Wechat audiovisual chat, are prohibited.
As it seemed at first, the matter was not limited to threats alone. However, Pavel Durov makes it clear: no compromises. A talented programmer, an extraordinary entrepreneur, the creator of the social network VKontakte, his net worth, according to open sources, is estimated at 1 billion 700 million dollars. Not every graduate of the Faculty of Philology of St. Petersburg State University can boast of such results. But the successful businessman gained fame as an eccentric person.
Footage from six years ago: Durov and his colleagues are wasting money in the center of St. Petersburg. Five thousand dollar bills are flying out of the window. Below the window there is a crowd, a brawl. Almost two thousand dollars were wasted either on the wind or on PR.
"Of course, this is an extravagant person. He is a businessman, and of a new generation, an information businessman. He understands very well how the media environment works. If the state is trying to restore order on its territory and in its segment of the Internet, then Telegram is trying to build a business in an aggressive manner and not necessarily on the territory of Russia. He is building a global business, therefore, it is quite possible that the audience that is located outside the Russian Federation is more important to him,” said Pavel Kushelev, head of the Vesti.Net program on the TV channel.
Perhaps part of the image is leaving Russia, and a categorical refusal to comply with the court decision, and a promise to pay grants to the administrators of VPN and proxy services that help Telegram bypass the bans.
"His position of not cooperating with states is completely outside the legal framework. The biggest question is always, what about Viber and WhatsApp? I sometimes am a participant in various kinds of negotiations. They talk. They try to agree on their problems, their difficulties. It is known that Google answers 32 thousand requests a year. And, most importantly, it does not lose people, it has excellent service. And nothing prevents Google from both working and understanding that it is responsible for the fact that its services are used bad people. So help and cooperate,” says German Klimenko, presidential adviser on Internet issues.
Another version that hit the press added to the intrigue: supposedly Durov was going to create a cryptocurrency, of course, without the approval of the authorities. And now on the Internet there is almost an entire campaign in support of the rebellious freethinking businessman: new touches to the existing image are ready by themselves.
"We call on Amazon, Google, Microsoft and Apple to stand up to Russian internet censorship. Uphold human rights by allowing Telegram access to their platforms and allowing them to change IP addresses without restrictions," the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) said.
The Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights responded. Edward Snowden also appeared on the Internet: although he had previously criticized Telegram, he now stood up for his former opponent.
While Durov is being protected from Roskomnadzor, the founder Facebook Mark Zuckerberg had to take the rap in the American Congress for almost five hours. They also called to the carpet in Strasbourg, although Zuckerberg ignored the European deputies.
Loud scandals in real life, not virtual world- a reason to think about what the Internet will be like. It is likely that the appearance of boundaries in the limitless web is only a matter of time.
The most striking example is China, the world leader in the number of users, which has fenced itself off from shared internet 15 years ago. To operate a website in China, you need to obtain a license. There is a blacklist of resources. To post a foreign publication or provide a link to it, the material must receive appropriate approval. Words related to state security are filtered or blocked separately. Criticism of the government, Chinese history, religious extremism, and pornography are unacceptable.
“Their well-known Firewall prohibits, for example, the operation of services such as Facebook in China, the operation of instant messengers in China. That’s why they use their services,” said Maxim Bolshev.
“There is a feeling that the era of globalization has to some extent, if not ended, then this movement of globalization has gone a little backwards, and in all countries of the world. Therefore, this means that to some extent an attempt to isolate sectors of the Internet is appearing in all countries,” noted Pavel Kushelev .
"All states will build virtual borders. This is very important. All states will refuse anonymity. The maneuver space for the conditional Pavel Durov is shrinking every year, because when the Internet appeared, no one assessed the consequences, everyone is building virtual borders. And we must understand this, it is inevitable. And this is actually for the benefit of all of us. Our users will not experience inconvenience, there will simply be less anonymity," German Klimenko is sure.
It’s too early to get used to the new rules - they still need to be created. And that means reaching agreement between states and with the state itself. But to create a new global network architecture and we need real dialogue instead of virtual barricades.
By the way, in China the Telegram messenger is blocked by law. Those who download prohibited applications and use them anonymously are simply disabled mobile communications. It's just a fact.
And yet, a little about the much-loved cart, which the evil guys take away, but cannot take away.
If I'm not confusing anything, then this whole story began after the terrorist attack in St. Petersburg. Then, as a result of operational search activities or whatever our security knights call it, we managed to identify six suspects. And the FSB needed some information from their posts in our favorite telezhenka. Correct me if I'm confusing something, but the FSB, in accordance with article number 23 of the constitution, went to court and received the appropriate permission (everything is like in American films, where a good policeman first gets a warrant from a judge and then goes to search the house of the alleged villain) and in accordance with the court decision Russian Federation, sent a request via telegram...
Telegram is silent...
After that there was a trial, an 800 thousand fine, a public discussion, entry into the register, threats of blocking, a trial, blocking and it is quite possible that I missed a bunch of other interesting and dramatic moments.
That’s not the point, the point is that Durov is silent.
He broadcasts, of course, but in the media space.
And in the space of relations between him and the state, he is silent.
And you know, this is not normal no matter how you look at it.
Let me illustrate.
Your daughter was raped.
And so the detective knights go to court, get permission to view the suspect’s account in the cart in order to speed up the search, and send a request by telegram.
But Durov is silent...
But the knights of detective work are not done with their fingers, they find the old apartment of a moral monster and go there to look for evidence and clues. Naturally with permission from the court.
But the house manager won't let them in. He doesn't open the door and just ignores me. In some less prosperous countries than ours, there are such houses and entire areas...
Do you understand what I'm getting at?
A weak state that cannot enforce laws on its territory is a disaster, a disaster for all of us.
Therefore, the cart needs to be blocked.
And now the nuances.
Number one. But the cart works. The ru tracker also works, where you access through foreign proxies or, if you are completely savvy, then even through Tor. Oh, you're almost a hacker, you deceived stupid Roskomnadzor, hehe.
There is just one nuance - in Russia the work of sites and programs is blocked, not the users. In Germany, if you access a torrent unprotected, you will receive a letter of happiness with a fine. And here no one restricts your freedom in this regard. And, accordingly, you didn’t trick anyone with your Thor.
Number two. It’s difficult to block completely, completely, so that you can’t get out, even in China. But for us it’s completely impossible. And Roskomnadzor understands this first of all. Technically, blocking means causing the user audience to fade and shrink. This is a process, not a resolution. The trolley will get tired of running, Amazon, Google will send it, others will also send it, getting into the trolley will become more difficult, the hype will subside, users will get tired of the inconvenience of logging in and using it, several months will pass and the goal will be achieved - the telegram will lose weight.
Number three. But, despite the fact that the cart is drying up, it will still remain an attractive way to discuss evil plans for all kinds of bad guys, from drug couriers and savvy gopotas to barmaleys of all stripes. Well, yes, what will you do?
However, specific Durov and his specific team will lose profitability from the Russian segment of the market. This is not Durov’s punishment, so you understand. Durov said goodbye to the Russian segment of the market when he decided to ignore our laws, he was offended by Russia, what to do. This is a sign to all other market participants who are not ready to lose money.
This signal sounds something like this:
Either you comply with the Laws of the Russian Federation, or Roskomnadzor will make it so that you will not be able to make a profit from our market.
Don't you like it? Has your favorite trolley been taken away from you? Is it okay that 15 years ago some influential and super-rich people were deprived of the opportunity to make super-profits by selling well fluid? They were then also convinced to comply with the laws of the country, and one even, as a signal, went to his bunk. And they were much more sorry for their excess income than you. But here we celebrate the triumph of justice, and in the case of the cart we shout about oppression.
The funny thing is that a strong state is strong only when it is equally ruthless in ensuring the rule of law for everyone.
And now the fourth and final point. Roskomnadzor is indeed in a compromising situation. The crowd of hamsters, which were unexpectedly joined even by previously seemingly sober people, are chanting slogans that imply that the state is giving up. And judging by the slogans, Roskomnadzor is to blame for this, because it got involved in the war without being able to win. And you know, I really wouldn’t want anyone to listen to these slogans, because in the world there is no question whether to block or not, in the world the question is: to block a user with tools, as in the USA and Germany, or with tools, as in China?
And I equally don’t want to sit behind the great Russian wall, or to be accepted under white hands every time I download a fresh movie or an unlicensed program from a root tracker.
I am satisfied that Roskomnadzor exchanges signals with business without getting me, the user, involved.
The information in this note will not be new for many; every second commentator on iXBT is a specialist highest category in all areas at once (this is a compliment), they know all this better than the Telegram service itself and Roskomnadzor. But there are readers who still do not understand how Telegram manages to bypass blocking. I'll try to explain it to them. in simple language just the way you like it.
The mechanism for bypassing blocking in Telegram appeared long before public conflict situation entered the active phase. I will not describe the essence of the public conflict - it is not important in the context of this note. Telegram developers have come up with an elegant scheme - they use push notification services from Apple and Google to transmit additional IP addresses of their data centers (servers).
To describe all the intricacies of the process clearly, I will limit myself only to the version of Telegram for iOS, the source codes of which are available, and the Apple Push Notification service (APNs) - Apple's push notification service.
Each program that works with its servers must have its own starting point - an address or addresses main servers, to which you need to connect. Naturally, Telegram also has them. Here they are:
IPv4 addresses: 149.154.175.50, 149.154.167.51, 149.154.175.100, 149.154.167.91, 149.154.171.5. They were blocked by Roskomnadzor by decision of the Prosecutor General's Office. And, naturally, they are not available to most Russian users.
But their IPv6 equivalents are not blocked: 2001:b28:f23d:f001::a, 2001:67c:4e8:f002::a, 2001:b28:f23d:f003::a, 2001:67c:4e8:f004:: a, 2001:b28:f23f:f005::a. The reason is simple - Roskomnadzor and their “Inspector” system have never learned to work with IPv6. These are classic parasites who, even with proper funding, could not implement such support in several years. And, naturally, if your provider and your equipment support IPv6, then you will not have any problems with access to these addresses. Hence, no problems accessing Telegram. This is the first and main reason why Telegram for iOS still works for many users.
Apple has special server APNs (Apple Push Notification service). At any time, the software owner's server can send a push notification to any instance of its program.
When you first launch a program that supports push notifications, APNs issues the program a token - the identifier of a specific instance of the program on the user’s device. The program must send this token to the software developer’s server, where it will be stored and used. Using this token, the developer server can generate a special small message at any time and send it to the APNs server. The APNs server will in turn send a message specific program specific device, focusing on this token.
The Telegram server uses such messages not only to notify about events, but also to transmit information to clients about new IP addresses of data centers. Here's what extracting information about a new IP address from such a push notification looks like:
There is one very important nuance in one stage. The Telegram program will not be able to transfer a token to the developer’s server if the server’s IP addresses are blocked. This means that the Telegram server will not be able to send a push notification (with the updated IP address of the data center) to this device, because its token is unknown. Because IPv6 addresses are not blocked, everything works fine where the provider and client network hardware supports IPv6.
Those. it all comes down to blocking the base IPv6 addresses of Telegram servers. Once it is completed ( and on this moment it has not been completed), all new instances of the Telegram program ( fresh installation) will stop working. Firstly, the program will not be able to connect to Telegram servers because they will be blocked. Secondly, the program will not be able to receive new data center addresses via push notifications, because the program will again not be able to send a token to the Telegram server to receive such notifications.
Programs that are already installed on clients and have managed to transfer the token to the Telegram server will be able to receive push notifications with new data center addresses and will continue to work.
What you need to do to completely extinguish Telegram (iOS version) in Russia:
- Block all base IP addresses of Telegram servers. Including those that come in push notifications (in reality there are few of them). This is the most important point. (IPv6 addresses of Telegram servers are not blocked).
- Oblige Apple to remove the Telegram application from the Russian one App Store. Roskomnadzor did not do this, the program has not yet been removed, although Apple always makes concessions in this regard in all countries (business, nothing personal).
- Oblige Apple to disable push notifications addressed to the Telegram program for Russian IP addresses. This is not a very common requirement, but it is feasible. If Apple does not announce an acceptable time frame for implementation, Roskomnadzor should disable access to APNs Apple servers(there are only a few addresses, this is trivial), i.e. Globally disable push notifications for iOS devices. Roskomnadzor did not do this.
What do we see? Roskomnadzor did not fulfill a single point to achieve the task(but for some reason they turned off a huge number of secondary resources on the network that are not relevant to the task, for some reason they turned off some VPN services, etc., and the Telegram service itself does not use any powerful methods to bypass blocking; moreover, Roskomnadzor did not fulfill the very first point, which in no way depends on third party services, but at the same time started blocking third party resources). Why? Roskomnadzor has the most powerful financial, technical and administrative resources, 3,000 employees. Maybe they are classic parasites who lack the competence to do this? Or maybe they don’t have a real task of blocking Telegram (and Mr. Durov writes naive messages asking them to send insiders about the actions of Roskomnadzor, knowing full well what is needed for blocking)?