A mass blackout has thrown numerous websites on the Russian-speaking internet into chaos, reports The Moscow Times. On Tuesday evening, a DNSSEC failure led to the outage of crucial .ru and .рф domains, leaving users both inside and outside Russia grappling with disruptions to popular platforms.

Among the casualties were prominent services such as Tinkoff Bank, online marketplaces Avito and Wildberries, search engine giant Yandex, and leading telecoms provider MTS. The blackout even reached The Moscow Times' Russian service.

Many channels report of a massive failure of the Russian internet. Especially people in major cities such as Moscow trying to connect to .ru domains report that no sides are loading.

Almost all mobile providers and operators are affected.

Source: https://t.co/hxojmzegPe… pic.twitter.com/v1S56LQvnm

— (((Tendar))) (@Tendar) January 30, 2024

The administrator for the national-level .ru and .рф domains acknowledged the issue and assured users that efforts were underway to resolve the problem promptly.

In a statement to Fontanka, the .RU/.Рф Domain Coordination Center clarified, “A technical problem has arisen affecting the .ru zone associated with the global DNSSEC infrastructure. Specialists from the Internet Technical Center and MSK-IX are working to eliminate it. The problem has now been resolved for National Domain Name System subscribers. Restoration work is underway.”

Russia's Digital Development Ministry chimed in, stating that access to .ru websites would be restored "in the near future." The situation remains dynamic, with this story continuing to unfold.