Russia’s telecommunications Roskomnadzor, blocked over 1.8 million IP addresses belonging to Amazon and Google’s cloud infrastructure.
The following IP addresses blocks have been restricted in Russia at the ISP level. The IP ranges account for 1,835,008 IPs.
52.58.0.0/15
18.196.0.0/15
18.194.0.0/15
18.184.0.0/15
35.156.0.0/14
35.192.0.0/12The move to ban these IP blocks is a response to Telegram moving some of its infrastructure to Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud servers over the weekend.
Roskomnadzor banned the Telegram instant messaging client inside Russia’s border on Friday, April 13, after Telegram refused to hand over customers’ encryption keys to the FSB, Russia’s main intelligence service.
By moving servers to Amazon and Google servers, Telegram was able to skirt the initial ban and provide service to Russian users over the weekend.
Many users ridiculed Roskomnadzor’s decision on social media, and for good reasons, as the move to mass-ban so many IP addresses had secondary repercussions, as it also blocked many legitimate web services. Users reported many online games, mobile apps, and cryptocurrency services going dark over the course of the day.
