On November 6, Olga Baskakova, Project Head at the Coordination Center for TLD .RU/.РФ as, was among the speakers at the Armenian Internet Governance Forum (ArmIGF 2025) in Yerevan.
In her remarks, she discussed mechanisms for countering cyber threats in Russia, citing the example of relevant organizations and registrars working within the Domain Patrol project. Launched in 2012, this initiative is designed to suspend malicious domains in the .RU and .РФ zones.
The speaker said that deleting malicious content was one of the main measures for countering online abuse and offered a go-to solution. Suspending the addressing is another option. This method applies to .RU and .РФ domains when registrars terminate the DNS delegation at the request of a trusted expert.
Olga Baskakova also elaborated on new measures for fighting online scams and phishing attacks in Russia, which include a mandate for mobile carriers to bloc suspicious calls, limit the number of SIM cards they issue, as well as requiring banks to reimburse funds lost in fraudulent transactions and holding people involved in bank drops accountable. Russian mobile carriers have been tasked with blocking fake calls in March 2024, and since that time they have had to check 600 million calls every day for blocking about two million of them.
“To an extent, this does protect users against threats posed by social engineering practices. After all, this kind of fraud is the main weapon for online scammers. A new restriction came into force in November 2025. Under a federal law, a person can register a maximum of 20 SIM cards in his or her name, while this number is even lower – 10 – for foreign nationals. This can also help lower the number of fraud victims,” Olga Baskakova pointed out.
In conclusion, she stressed that having all the stakeholders work together is instrumental for effectively countering cyber threats. This includes registrars, providers, banks, communication operators and government institutions. “Self-regulating mechanisms can be very effective as long as all the parties involved trust each other,” Olga Baskakova said to round up her presentation.
