The revocation of international certificates has caused problems for Russian websites — intelligence
Kyiv • UNN
Following the revocation of GlobalSign certificates, Russian government and bank websites are experiencing access problems. Businesses are forced to spend millions of rubles switching to their own certificates.
More than 20,000 Russian domains have been left without international security validation after GlobalSign certificates were revoked. As a result, access problems are already occurring on the websites of government institutions and major banks, while Russian businesses are being forced to spend millions of rubles switching to their own certificates. This was reported by the Foreign Intelligence Service, UNN writes.
Due to the mass cancellation of GlobalSign international security certificates, Russian web resources are falling away from the civilized internet. Currently, the websites of government services (the Federal Tax Service) and key banks simply refuse to open in normal global browsers, offering users the choice of either risking their data or voluntarily moving into a "digital GULAG swamp"
To resolve the problem the Russians created for themselves, the Russian Ministry of Digital Development is promoting "import-substituted" certificates. The code components themselves are formally free, but businesses will traditionally have to pay to reconfigure their infrastructure for them. Reconfiguring systems for large corporations will cost between 10 and 50 million rubles and take up to six months. This will require the mass replacement of software and updates to operating systems, dealing yet another painful blow to the war-exhausted budget and IT sector.
As the intelligence service notes, being unable to integrate their certificates into global browsers (Chrome, Firefox, and Safari are predictably ignoring developments by the sanctioned aggressor), Kremlin officials are persistently recommending that everyone switch to "Yandex Browser." However, even experts in Russia itself acknowledge that using this "makeshift browser" causes freezes and cache problems, while data security is not even worth discussing.
It has reached the point where more than 20,000 Russian domains, including "Gazprombank," "ALROSA," and other pillars of Putin's regime, remain without international security validation. Despite the fact that 90% of the Russian market still relies on foreign certificates, foreign companies continue to revoke them. This automatically makes Russian internal systems, messengers, email, and banking APIs ideal targets for hacker attacks.
Thus, the entire cost of this "great geopolitical maneuver" and technical overhaul will ultimately have to be paid exclusively by Russian businesses. While Kremlin officials report on "successful import substitution," entrepreneurs are forced to scrape millions of rubles from budgets exhausted by war and sanctions simply to ensure that their internal services do not literally fall apart when clicked