Ukraine’s request targeting Russia’s access to the internet was dismissed by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) in its response issued on March 2. The California-based non-profit emphasised its support of a neutral and global internet.
“As you know, the Internet is a decentralized system. No one actor has the ability to control it or shut it down,” — Göran Marby, President and CEO of ICANN
Unlike other major wars in Europe, the ongoing conflict between Russia and Ukraine has crossed over to the internet. As a result, tech companies and organisations are being pressed to pick a side. The vast number of platforms exiting Russia has also led to concerns that the country might be heading towards a “splinter net“.
Why has ICANN refused?
“It is only through broad and unimpeded access to the Internet that citizens can receive reliable information and a diversity of viewpoints. Regardless of the source, ICANN does not control internet access or content.” — Göran Marby
Elaborating on the technical and policy reasons behind the organisation’s decision, Marby wrote:
- Cannot take unilateral action: The organisation refused to disconnect country-code top-level domains because “globally agreed policies do not provide for ICANN to take unilateral action”.
- Cannot heed requests from one nation about another: Marby said that ICANN predominantly validates requests that come from authorised parties within the respective country or territory. Thus, requests from one territory or country concerning internal operations within another territory or country appear to be off limits for the organisation. “Such a change in the process would have devastating and permanent effects on the trust and utility of this global system,” Marby added.
- ICANN doesn’t look after root DNS servers: The root server system is composed of many geographically-distributed nodes maintained by independent operators, Marby said.
- No role in SSL certificates: ICANN cannot pull specific SSL certificates for the domains mentioned in Ukraine’s letter as they are produced by third-party operators. Short for Secure Sockets Layer, SSL certificates are used to verify the owner of a domain name and can be purchased from a web services company who is a Certificate Authority (CA).
What were Ukraine’s requests?
Outlining Russia’s recent aggression towards the country, the Ukrainian Minister of Digital Transformation Mykhailo Fedorov called on ICANN to implement the following sanctions:
- Revoke the domains ‘.ru’, ‘.рф’ and ‘.su’ permanently or temporarily. Fedorov mentioned that other Russian Federation domain names could also be added to the list.
- Contribute to revoke the SSL certificates for these three domains
- Shut down DNS root serves located within the Russian Federation, specifically those situated in Saint Petersburg and Moscow.
Besides ICANN, the Ukrainian minister also approached the Réseaux IP Européens Network Coordination Centre (RIPE NCC), a regional internet registry, to “withdraw the right to use all IPv4 and IPv6 addresses by all Russian members of RIPE NCC (LIRs-Local Internet Registries), and to block the DNS root servers that it is operating.” But this organisation has also rejected the plea, adding that “the means to communicate should not be affected by domestic political disputes, international conflicts or war.”
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