Russia’s VPN Crackdown Caused Bank Outage, Telegram Founder Says
Moscow has in recent months intensified a crackdown on internet use and applications it doesn’t control, as it presses Russians to adopt a state-run “super-app” called Max, modeled after China’s WeChat.
Source: Bloomberg
Russia’s attempts to restrict the use of virtual private networks amid a clampdown on the Telegram messaging platform triggered the widespread banking outage seen across the country this week, the service’s billionaire founder Pavel Durov said.
“Telegram was banned in Russia, yet 65 million Russians still use it daily via VPNs,” Durov said Saturday in a post on Telegram. “The government has spent years trying to ban VPNs too. Their blocking attempts just triggered a massive banking failure; cash briefly became the only payment method nationwide yesterday.”