Glitch in .ru domain zone caused by technical problem - Russian minister

MOSCOW. Feb 20 (Interfax) - A probe of a glitch in the .ru domain zone has proven the absence of an external interference, Russian Minister of Digital Development, Communication and Mass Media Maksut Shadayev said.

"The probe shows that it was a strictly technical problem and no sign of an external interference was found," Shadayev told reporters on Tuesday.

Media said in the evening of January 30, citing users from big Russian cities, that mobile operators and providers had a glitch, which prevented websites and applications from opening in the .ru domain zone.

According to the Downradar service, problems were seen in operation of Yandex, MTS, Megafon, Beeline, Ozon , Avito, Wildberries, Kinopoisk and some other websites.

Megafon and VimpelCom told Interfax that access problems were unrelated to the operation of their networks.

The Ministry of Digital Development, Communication and Mass Media explained the inaccessibility of websites and applications in the .ru domain zone with "a technical problem linked to the DNSSEC global infrastructure," which is a set of extensions to the DNS protocol providing the integrity and reliability of data.

In turn, the .ru/.rf domain coordination center said several days later that the glitch in the .ru domain zone resulted from incorrect operation of the software that implements a mechanism for signing a file with .ru zone data into the global system of DNS servers.

DNS (domain name system) is a computer-distributed system for obtaining information about domains.