On January 14, 2025, Russians faced a massive internet outage affecting numerous providers and online services. According to experts and media reports, the cause was a malfunction of the Technical Means of Threat Countermeasures (TMTC).
TMTC in Russia is special equipment installed at internet service providers under the "Sovereign Internet" law (90-FZ). This system is designed for centralized traffic filtering and, according to the official version, protection of the Russian internet segment from external threats. The equipment is managed by Roskomnadzor and the Main Radio Frequency Center (GRFC).
During the January outage, users encountered serious problems:
- Inability to make payments with bank cards in stores
- Disruptions in car-sharing and taxi services
- Problems accessing online banking
- Failure of smart barriers
- Unavailability of IPTV and online navigation
According to experts, the failure occurred due to an unsuccessful update of TMTC settings, which led to the system temporarily switching to "whitelist" mode, where all traffic is blocked except for specifically permitted content. After the settings were restored to their previous state, services resumed operation.
Notably, Roskomnadzor only made a brief comment about a "temporary connectivity disruption" without providing detailed explanations of the incident. Sources in the Ministry of Digital Development link the incident to an update of the Automated Internet Security System (AISS).
Experts note that such large-scale failures have become significantly more frequent since the implementation of the TMTC system, which calls into question the effectiveness of the current implementation of the "Sovereign Internet" law, originally intended to increase the stability of the Russian internet segment.