The Internet in Cyrillic

With all the hubbub in Russia’s online community regarding LiveJournal and increased internet watchdogs, another frightening development has been added to the mix, this time involving Russia’s campaign to establish a new Cyrillic internet. According to a report in the Guardian, the government is lobbying hard to change the DNS from “.ru” to “.rf”, which could possibly involve a new root server based in Russia, requiring all people to register. Needless to say, this raises some concerns that the Kremlin may be seeking a greater level of control over internet content. Guillaume Lovet of Fortinet says “Russia has a very strong academic tradition of technical universities, which form very sharp and competent computer scientists. At the same time, the average income per head is extremely low. This combination creates an explosive cocktail. Any attempt to confine Russian hackers inside some kind of Russian cyberspace is bound to fail.”