The 23rd annual conference, Ensuring Trust and Security in the Use of ICT, took place in Moscow on April 2-3. It was organized by the Russian Association of Networks and Services (RANS). The program of the two-day conference featured 10 sections, where industry specialists discussed issues of current relevance, including priorities of industry regulation, specifics of categorizing critical information infrastructure, and the role of communications supervisory and licensing bodies in ensuring trust.
As the general partner of the event, the Coordination Center for TLD .RU/.РФ hosted a roundtable titled Ensuring Trust and Security in the Development and Use of Internet Infrastructure. Coordination Center Director Andrey Vorobyev moderated the discussion attended by Yevgeny Morozov (MSK-IX), Nikita Novikov (Technical Center of Internet), Yevgeny Kuskevich (RIPN), Georgy Georgievsky and Vadim Mikhailov (Coordination Center for TLD .RU/.РФ).
The attendees discussed ways to further improve the accessibility, efficiency, quality and security of the Russian internet and its further operation as part of the international ICT infrastructure.
“Traffic exchange points are critical infrastructure hubs providing interconnection between multiple networks. They are the cornerstone of the DNS infrastructure; this is the way it is done all over the world, and we use the best practices. However, localizing traffic is an overarching task for the entire telecom community. So I urge all stakeholders to contribute to this effort, thereby making our internet more stable and reliable,” MSK-IX Director General Yevgeny Morozov said.
Georgy Georgievsky, Head of Registrar and End-User Projects at the Coordination Center, spoke about the changes in the Russian domain registration market and about the new model of interaction with partners. He also highlighted the 15th anniversary of the national Cyrillic domain .РФ.
“What does ccTLD .РФ mean for Russian citizens, for Russia as a country? Above all, convenience when it comes to spelling and memorizing. One of our advertising campaigns for the Cyrillic domain was named ‘.РФ, spell as it sounds.’ .РФ has about 800,000 domain names, and many more other designations, word combinations, letter combinations, and even long sentences can be registered as domain names. They are truly countless,” Georgy Georgievsky noted.
The discussion focused on dealing with attacks where perpetrators use homoglyphs to spoof domain names. Vadim Mikhailov, an infrastructure consultant for the Coordination Center, delivered a report on the danger of homoglyph attacks and the potential AI-enabled capabilities for proactive detection of malicious registrations and phishing sites.
“There is a variety of capabilities for countering homoglyph attacks. Good digital hygiene, which starts with users, is an essential protective measure. However, internet governance bodies such as ICANN need to take action to ensure that the necessary capabilities are available for everyone,” Vadim Mikhailov said.
“.SU has one important rule that rules out spoofing – one domain name cannot contain Latin, Cyrillic, or any other characters simultaneously. We have accumulated certain experience, and we are very glad that .РФ is also working towards support for language diversity,” emphasized Yevgeny Kuskevich, Director for .SU Development at the Russian Research Institute for Public Networks (RIPN).
