News

Russia’s Rostelecom ‘hijacks’ Apple engineering network for 12 hours

Apple has paid a Russian fine of 1.2 billion roubles ($13.65 million), the Russian antitrust agency said on Monday, according to Reuters.

As noted by AppleInsider: For about 12 hours, Russia’s Rostelecom tried repeatedly to route users of Apple services through own servers, even through countermeasures applied by Apple engineers., according to a report from MANRS.

“We are not aware of any information yet from Apple that indicates what, if any, Apple services were affected,” says MANRS. “We also have not seen any information from Rostelecom about whether this was a configuration mistake or a deliberate action.”

Through the period of time that the routing was under attack, Apple services had no downtime, nor a notable increase in complaints.

MANRS (Mutually Agreed Norms for Routing Security) is a global initiative, supported by the Internet Society, that provides crucial fixes to reduce the most common routing threats.

Rostelecom is Russia’s largest provider of digital service for households, private businesses, government and municipal authorities, and other telecom providers. It interconnects all local public operators’ networks into a single national network for long-distance service.

Dennis Sellers
the authorDennis Sellers
Dennis Sellers is the editor/publisher of Apple World Today. He’s been an “Apple journalist” since 1995 (starting with the first big Apple news site, MacCentral). He loves to read, run, play sports, and watch movies.