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Given that it's 2017 and a huge fraction of the traffic is HTTPS anyway, is there any practical benefit to this?



Newsflash: HTTPS is not bulletproof. Subtle weaknesses are uncovered regularly. The latest: https://thehackernews.com/2017/12/bleichenbacher-robot-rsa.h...


This is quite interesting: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12193353

and not too long ago a big portion of Internet were rerouted to Russia (BGP). One must wonder what they are up to.

Perhaps the Russian is mapping the world’s Internet, particularly on identifying critical infrastructure which without them would paralyze the world.

My theory is based on North Korea. Imagine NK owns its own cable (I believe they just have its own country interent, but still rely on the global cables) or is successful to hijack while severing communication of the rest of the world, NK can strike its adversaries without worries. Apply this to Russian. We are so dependent on the Interent (think dns and ntp), we are doomed if we can’t communicate (let alone getting emergency alert).

Btw, I can’t help but have to leave a note about the last part of your username... :)


> and not too long ago a big portion of Internet were rerouted to Russia (BGP)

This happens every few months, and not always by Russian ISPs. This would never happen if all upstream providers had proper filters on accepting BGP requests.

It really means the current system of using BGP is not resilient, and never has been.

Look up bgp hijack nanog


Show of power, threat total disruption of communication. I guess the point is "If we are only 12th most powerful economy (but equal defence wise) the 1st will suffer this much more from such an action."

Putin style politics, blackmailing like the Mafia. Sadly Trump starts to imitate this.


It could also be encrypted at the cable endpoints, denying a snooper even the stuff that's normally unencrypted.

Might be worth the cost, too, since then there's no reason for people to cut your cables.


Sure. These days the point isn't to eavesdrop, but to insinuate that you could credibly disrupt communications.




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