Russia blocks tens of thousands of Microsoft IP addresses

In its expanding war on the instant messenger Telegram, Russia’s federal censor has blocked tens of thousands of IP addresses operated by the Microsoft Azure cloud platform.

According to an unofficial copy of Roskomnadzor’s “out-load” list of banned online content, the agency has ordered Russian ISPs to cut access to the subnet 51.136.0.0/15, which masks 131,000 IP addresses, as well as the Azure subnet 51.136.0.0/17, which masks another 32,000 IP addresses. Roskomnadzor has also blocked other subnets operated by Microsoft-owned companies.

Microsoft Azure is a cloud computing service for building, testing, deploying, and managing applications and services through a global network of Microsoft-managed data centers.

On Wednesday, Roskomnadzor also blocked tens of thousands of IP addresses owned by the U.S.-based cloud infrastructure provider DigitalOcean. According to a copy of Roskomnadzor’s “out-load” list, late on April 18, the agency ordered Russian ISPs to start blocking the subnets 167.99.0.0/16 and 206.189.0.0/16, each of which masks 65,000 IP addresses.

As part of its ongoing efforts to cut off access to the instant messenger Telegram, Russia’s federal censor has blocked millions of IP addresses belonging to cloud services operated by Google and Amazon, inadvertently disrupting a variety of Russian businesses, from online schools to courier delivery services. Roskomnadzor denies the disruptions, but some state officials are calling on the agency to issue an apology and scale back its attack on Telegram.