Calls to Telegram and WhatsApp blocked in Russia

The Federal Service for Supervision of Communications and Information Technology announced a partial restriction of voice calls in the Telegram and WhatsApp messengers. According to the agency, these services have become the main channels for fraud and “involvement in subversive and terrorist activities,” the Russian publication Meduza reports.

Russia said that access to calls would be restored only after the requirements of local legislation were met. The agency believes that such a measure will reduce the number of calls from scammers. Users noticed the first outages on August 10-11.

Back in late May, the country’s largest mobile operators – MTS, Megafon, Beeline and Tele2 – proposed blocking calls in foreign messengers. In their opinion, this step would reduce pressure from security forces and avoid a complete blocking of services.

Earlier, the British The Guardian reported on a major cyberattack, which is behind the Russian GRU, namely unit 26165 — better known as APT28 or Fancy Bear. According to the British National Cyber Security Center (NCSC) and allies, hackers gained one-time access to images from 10,000 video surveillance cameras installed at border crossings, railway junctions and military facilities in Ukraine, as well as Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Hungary.

What happened

The hackers used the cameras for a one-time recording of the situation – they received snapshots of the moment, rather than a continuous broadcast. However, this turned out to be enough to analyze the routes of supplying weapons and humanitarian aid to Ukraine.

Here is how the access points were distributed:

• 80% of cameras — in Ukraine (~8000 devices)
• 10% — in Romania (~1000)
• 4% — in Poland (~400)
• 2.8% — in Hungary (~280)
• 1.7% — in Slovakia (~170)
• ~150 cameras — geography is not installed

APT28 has previously been implicated in investigations into the hacking of the US Democratic Party’s servers in 2016, as well as in the World Anti-Doping Agency data leak. But the current operation is one of the largest and most technical, aimed at the backs of support for Ukraine.