Mar 15, 2022 07:00:00

What activities have Russian asylum seekers found a way to escape Russian Internet censorship?

by Aleksandr Litreev

TechRadar, a technical media outlet, described Alexander Ritrev, a software engineer born in 1996 who created an app for quick contact with lawyers for Russians and a system to circumvent Internet censorship.

The Russian exile who found a way past Putin's internet firewall | TechRadar

https://www.techradar.com/news/the-russian-exile-who-found-a-way-past-putins-internet-firewall

Mr. Ritrev was born in St. Petersburg, Russia's second largest city, and studied software engineering at a local university. In December 2017, just before Mr. Litrev graduated from college, Alexei Navalny , who had been conducting political activities with anti-Putin, announced that he would run for the Russian presidential election. Around this time, Mr. Ritref joined an organization that supports Mr. Navalny and advised from the perspective of cyber security. Eventually, he was at the forefront of the organization, and Ritrev recalled that 'the more we supported the organization, the more we were involved in the protests themselves.'

Around the same time, a large number of arrests were born in a large-scale demonstration over a movie accusing Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev of corruption released by Mr. Navalny. In response to this, Mr. Ritref developed a smartphone application called 'Red Button'. As the name implies, this app sends the GPS information of the device to the family and the lawyer community by pressing the 'red button' on the screen, and the person who presses the button can receive assistance immediately.

Red Button, as Ritrev said, 'Uber for lawyers,' talked about the advantage that users can easily contact lawyers, and it has been downloaded by millions of users and jumped to the top of the Russian app store. It is said that it has become popular. It is said that this app had about 1.1 million active users as of February 2022, but the number is increasing due to Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

Ritrev is also known to have exposed the vulnerabilities of the Russian censorship system.

In Russia, the Federal Bureau of Communication, Information Technology and Mass Media Monitoring (Roskomnadzor) has been managing domestic information since 2008, but since Mr. Navalny's activity in 2017, it is said that it is proceeding with a policy of strengthening censorship. matter. Roskomnadzor said he began blocking access to dissident news outlets, blogs and other media, and eradicated Navalny's name from public websites.

In it, Mr. Ritrev discovered that Roskomnadzor's censorship system had 'a vulnerability that made malicious persons unable to use any website in the country.' When Mr. Ritref proved the theory, 70% of Russians were temporarily unable to use Google search, but Mr. Ritref said that he reported the vulnerability to the Russian government but did not get it. Therefore, when Mr. Ritref released the details to the public, some people actually abused it and stopped various services.

by Aleksandr Litreev

Another system developed by Mr. Ritrev avoids the 'Internet censorship' launched by the Russian government.

Russia is the country where the highly confidential message application '

Telegram ' was developed, and it is said that about 30 million people are using the application. However, Roskomnadzor announced a total ban on Telegram in 2018 because it 'promotes crime,' and has since asked Apple to 'remove it from the App Store.' In response to these announcements, Ritrev built a system to maintain access to Telegram for Russians. With the support of the founder of Telegram, it was said that it was providing access to Telegram users virtually all over Russia via the proxy network built by Mr. Ritrev. After Roskomnadzor lifted the Telegram ban in 2020, Ritrev converted the system he built into a VPN service, which he had been running in Estonia for several years.

When he returned to Russia in 2020, he was charged with exile and possession of foreign documents, but he has succeeded in asylum with the help of the Estonian embassy.

'There are many people in Europe who think that most Russians support Putin, but that's not true at all. Currently, Putin's approval rating,' Ritrev said of Russia's invasion of Ukraine and President Putin. Is at the lowest level ever. Russians do not want war or censorship with anyone, 'said people living in oppressive regimes not only in Russia but around the world with free and open access to the Internet. By being able to do so, we hope to open up a space for dissident voices and alternative sources of information to survive rhetoric and propaganda.