VPN Services Stabilize in Russia? Expert Warns Users Not to Relax as New Blocks May Be Coming
Russians have recently observed that VPN services and anonymizers have begun working more reliably, yet experts urge caution and warn against celebrating any lasting victory.
Technical director Sergey Shcherbakov of the Russian company Stakhanovets stated that the current period of relative stability is most likely a technical pause rather than a sign of relaxed government control.
During spring and early summer, systems of deep packet inspection employed by internet providers blocked connections quite crudely by detecting digital fingerprints of protocols such as OpenVPN, WireGuard and others. This approach resulted in excessive false positives, interrupting even legitimate traffic and causing mass connection drops across the country.
Shcherbakov believes the blocking equipment is now being recalibrated. Operators are gathering intelligence on used ports, reconnection frequency, and traffic obfuscation methods in order to deploy more accurate and targeted filtering mechanisms in the near future.
At the same time, ordinary users have also improved their operational security. Many now keep several VPN clients installed, regularly switch between protocols and ports, and activate obfuscation features when necessary. When one service becomes unavailable, another can be launched quickly, reducing the perceived impact of individual blocks.
Nevertheless, a blocked protocol does not spontaneously recover, and Shcherbakov anticipates a new wave of restrictions by the end of summer or beginning of autumn.
Instead of complete connection terminations, providers may adopt a strategy of gradual throttling: reducing speeds during peak hours, introducing artificial delays when loading pages, and interfering with the transfer of large files. In such a scenario, a VPN connection may appear active while remaining practically unusable for most everyday tasks.
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