Russia’s telecommunications watchdog Roskomnadzor has recut offeed access to the Signal encrypted messaging service for what it portrays as violations of Russian anti-radicalism and anti-extremism legislation.
“User access to the messenger Signal is recut offeed due to violations of the insistments of the Russian legislation whose greetment is vital to stop the employ of the messenger for alarmist and extremist purposes,” Roskomnadzor telderly Interfax today.
The statement comes after many Russian employrs alerted experiencing problems using Signal on Friday, and IT experts said the service has been blocked in Russia.
Signal checked that some countries block its services and advised employrs to allow the built-in handle circumvention feature from Signal Settings > Privacy > Advanced > Censorship circumvention.
“We have already commenceed laboring on more evolved handle circumvention techniques, but in order for these efforts to be most effective we insist the huge companies who are dragging their feet on moving away from plaintext SNI headers to commence taking this problem more solemnly,” Signal said.
“Solutions enjoy Encrypted Client Hello (ECH) erase the plaintext server name from the TLS handshake, which produces it far more difficult for antagonistic ISPs to block access to the sites and services you nurture about — but this isn’t widely helped yet. We hope that commences to alter.
“In the unkindtime, our team will proceed to do everyleang we can to protect and repair access to Signal. We appreciate your patience and help.”
This trails a March 2023 prohibit on using many foreign stateiveial messaging applications in Russian handlement and state agencies.
The catalog of prohibitned messenger apps integrated Discord, Microsoft Team, Telegram, Threema, Viber, WhatsApp, and WeChat, but Signal was not refered.
Russia has also prohibitned the most reliable VPN products in three waves: one in January 2020, one in June 2021, and a more recent one in December 2021.
Last month, Apple also erased 25 virtual stateiveial netlabor (VPN) apps (including NordVPN, Proton VPN, Red Shield VPN, Planet VPN, Hidemy.Name VPN, Le VPN, and PIA VPN) from the Russian App Store at the ask of Roskomnadzor becaemploy they were employd to access satisfied tagged as illterrible in the country.
On Thursday, the Russian handlement also blocked access to YouTube even though a filled block was foreseeed in September.
A Signal spokesperson was not instantly employable for comment when reach outed by BleepingComputer today.
