Russia’s Ministry of Digital Development confirmed the issues with website access and assured the public that the problem had been rectified.
Most of the outages were recorded in Moscow, St. Petersburg, the Krasnodar region, Bashkortostan, and Kostroma.
According to the website Downdetector, users most frequently reported problems accessing Russian sites Yandex (search engine) and VKontakte (social network), as well as various service apps, including banking applications.
Russian media outlet RBC reported that problems with accessing websites in .ru and .рф domains were due to an infrastructure glitch in the DNSSEC.
DNSSEC is a tool for ensuring the authenticity of responses from a DNS (domain name system) server, aimed at protecting against IP address spoofing. It helps safeguard users from fraud and protects websites from various types of cyberattacks and traffic hijacking.
Another Russian outlet, Sirena, suggested that this indicates ongoing experiments in Russia with the creation of a national DNS service.