Ukraine-Russia Crisis: VPN Demand Shoots In Both Countries Amid Tightening Internet Controls

The demand for Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) is increasing amid the deepening Russia-Ukraine crisis and as several users are falling prey to cyber attacks in both countries.

Ukraine-Russia Crisis: VPN Demand Shoots In Both Countries Amid Tightening Internet Controls

New Delhi: The demand for Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) is increasing amid the deepening Russia-Ukraine crisis and as several users are falling prey to cyber attacks in both countries, the media has reported. VPN gives users online privacy and anonymity by creating a private network from a public internet connection and mask users' internet protocol (IP) address so their online actions are virtually untraceable.

According to data from monitoring firm Top10VPN, demand for VPN increased and peaked 354 per cent higher in Russia on Sunday when compared to the daily average from February 16-23. VPN demand in Ukraine began noticeably increasing on February 15 in light of cyberattacks, Top10VPN said, and skyrocketed after the invasion, with demand peaking 424 per cent higher than the daily average in the first half of February, said a report by news agency Reuters.

Previously, Russia has been linked to DDoS attacks against Ukrainian government sites but a complete blackout would mean disabling telecommunications infrastructure at the network level and silencing Ukrainians in the process. Earlier, as Russia began military operations against Ukraine, key Ukrainian government websites were down as multiple cyberattacks hit the country.

The websites of the Ukrainian Cabinet of Ministers, and those of the ministries of foreign affairs, infrastructure, education and others, were also affected.

Earlier last week, the locals in Ukraine lost access to the internet as Russia-sponsored hackers are now targeting the internet infrastructure in areas like Kharkiv, the second-largest city in Ukraine. According to the civil society groups, there is a huge possibility of direct attacks on the internet infrastructure of Ukraine by Russia. The internet outage impacted the Triolan internet service provider that caters to a number of cities and other areas across the country, including Kharkiv.

"#Ukraine: Partial outage of Ukrainian ISP Triolan started around 2.50 am UTC," tweeted the Internet Outage Detection and Analysis (IODA) project at Georgia Tech in the US late on Thursday.