Hacker News Reader

Comment by shabier | Hacker News Reader

Regardless of how we feel about the current conflict between the countries, it is absolutely essential to keep the internet open and accessible to everyone, including those who we don't agree with.

View on HN

I agree that this was the right move by ICANN.

There's a discussion to be had about modernization and what this means in practical terms. The philosophical internet exists in a space unpolluted by things like critical infrastructure becoming internet-connected. It's not a safe space for these things and was never designed to be one.

Governments have been doing a poor to terrible job of threat modeling their critical infrastructure. You saw this in Florida[1] and in Texas[2] last year. These sorts of things should not be accessible via the Internet.

[1]: https://www.cnn.com/2021/02/11/us/florida-water-plant-hack/i...

[2]: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/may/15/us-energy-pi...

> I agree that this was the right move by ICANN.

Should this be decided by ICANN, though?

If someone asked you, personally, to cut Russia off from the Internet, are you making a "decision" when you reply that you can't do it? No, of course you're not. It's simply something you don't have the authority/ability to do.

Same with ICANN here.

Then they should say they don't have the authority.

They've already told that:

>The globally agreed policies do not provide for ICANN to take unilateral action to disconnect these domains as you request.

Shouldn't be that hard to read a one-and-a-half page long document!

It was a reply to:

> I agree that this was the right move by ICANN.

Which turned out not to be a "move", really.

As they laid out, it's really not within their mandate nor the scope of their operations to do this anyways.

Responding and explaining that is really all they can do.

ICANN has covered all their bases here as most/all rules for TLDs don't really apply to ccTLDs or the governments that run them since they "own" the ccTLD. This is why http://ai./ exists, and the only thing ICAAN has in terms of guarantees for .ru is this agreement letter[0]. ICAAN specifically states at the end that, even without this agreement letter, ICAAN will continue to perform their duties to maintain the DNS system.

0: https://www.icann.org/en/system/files/files/icann-ru-letters...

How exactly does that ai. domain function? I have never seen a working URL formatted like that.

Quick note: the dot at the end is not necessary (at least not in Unix), it works without it in Safari/Firefox/Chrome plus some tools like dig/ping/traceroute. You can test: http://ai/ http://ai./

ai is a TLD, and domains technically all end in a "." - that is, you're reading this on news.ycombinator.com. , just nobody ever bothers writing the final dot.

I wonder why doesn't Google make a `https://google.` since they own that TLD.

under gTLD rules (the TLDs that private companies can buy/invest in), TLD operators cannot host any records outside of NS and RRSIG/other cryptographic record types, so they can't host email or webpages at the TLD itself. ccTLDs (country code) are effectively "owned" by the nation state themselves so ICANN generally doesn't impose too many rules on how they're used.

https://www.icann.org/en/announcements/details/new-gtld-dotl...

I believe the biggest issue is that it would have to be a non-SSL domain, unless Google figure out someone willing to sign a certificate for a that. But I also remember this being frowned upon by ICANN or some other entity in the past. Btw, the dot is not necessary (maybe it is in some OSs/browsers): http://ai/

Consider; Russia is invading Ukraine.

If they keep at it, they will win; the military balance is too much in their favour.

Having conquered, they will then block out all content which carries truth and replace it with propaganda, just as it is in Russia.

You argue we must keep the Internet open and accessable to Russia, both in this situation, and for it to be used in this way.

No one on Earth could stop the Internet working inside Russia. The only thing that could be done, in principle, by ICANN and EU/US service providers is to block out all content coming in or out of Russia. This will have exactly the effect of blocking out all content which carries (EU/US) truth and replace it with (Russian) propaganda.

> The only thing that could be done, in principle, by ICANN and EU/US service providers is to block out all content coming in or out of Russia

I don't think this is true. The root DNS servers ICANN runs could stop handling requests for anything on the .ru/.su Russian TLDs. Though Russia runs the .ru servers internally, from ripn.net, there's still reliance on the root servers to point there. This would break Russian internal access to their own services.

If you run `dig +trace government.ru` you can see your first query is to the various "*.root-servers.net" name servers. When I did this my queries went like this:

   A.ROOT-SERVERS.NET -> B.DNS.RIPN.NET -> NS2.GOV.RU

That first step, contacting the centralized root servers, is where ICANN could have killed .ru domain lookups. (also my knowledge of DNS is shaky, so someone correct me if I'm wrong)

Russian ISP DNS servers would just do whatever is necessary to make it work, up to not respecting ICANN

You're right that they would have to take some action, but nothing would stop Russian ISPs from taking over *.root-servers.net, or responding with authoritative responses before reaching those.

Now, to be fair, significant, though temporary, damage could be done to them from the outside (who knows how many Russian systems have their DNS configured to 1.1.1.1 or 8.8.8.8, for example).

> No one on Earth could stop the Internet working inside Russia.

Without physical intervention.

You're not going to get physical intervention on Russia <-> China connectivity.

My issue is not that they don't agree with me its that they don't agree with the concept of the internet, that people should have access to information and communication. Russia are actively trying to disrupt freedom of information, communication and the internet with their state sponsored cyber attacks.

Absolutely!

How else will we get information of Bad Deeds (TM) of state actors or otherwise when SHTF.

No it isn’t. No one needs to access any website in Russia or Belarus. The international internet is totally unnecessary and nobody will suffer for cutting them out.

In fact, the world will benefit greatly from cutting out Russia from the internet! Imagine all the horrible cyberattacks and thefts of sensitive private info, money, ransomware attacks on cities schools and hospitals, and national security secrets stolen. China and Russia both deserve to be removed from the internet. They are abusive malicious actors using their access to the internet to do nothing but attack the responsible internet users.

The naive high horse, think of the slippery slope attitudes from know it all HN commenters are part of the downfall of the West and freedom and liberty, principles directly opposed by those two dictatorships. Those who benefit from those principles, yet allow them to be turned around and used by the enemy of those principles to destroy those principles, don’t deserve those principles. Freedom and liberty are privileges whose rights belong to those who jealously guard them rather than let them be molested and abused by their enemies.

> In fact, the world will benefit greatly from cutting out Russia from the internet! Imagine all the horrible cyberattacks and thefts of sensitive private info, money, ransomware attacks on cities schools and hospitals, and national security secrets stolen. China and Russia both deserve to be removed from the internet. They are abusive malicious actors using their access to the internet to do nothing but attack the responsible internet users.

Can't you already do this if you control your own firewall? You can, right now, block all access from IP address ranges in Russia and China.

You are incredibly naive.

You act like USA is the pinnacle of freedom and liberty with a two party system, systematic racism. Have funded wars(iraq,afghan, nam) and terrorist organisations just to fill its own pocket and completely destabilized other countries for its own profit. With its flawed copyright systems, sending legal threats to citizen of countries where they don't even have jurisdiction (look piratebay sweden) to sinkholing BGP routes for an entire website. So please stop acting like the west is the zenith of what freedom and liberty should look like.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com