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Russia Eyes AI-Powered VPN Crackdown With 95% Blocking Accuracy
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Russian authorities considered using AI to identify and block VPN services with up to 95% effectiveness, according to Kommersant on October 16.
The proposal appeared in a draft national plan for introducing artificial intelligence technologies through 2030. It envisioned AI analyzing the characteristics of 70% of VPN services targeted for blocking.
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Russia’s Digital Development Ministry stated that the measure is absent from the plan’s current version.
Russia currently uses what Kommersant described as “intelligent algorithms” to analyze internet traffic, but these systems are not considered AI. The ministry also plans to increase the capacity of its traffic-filtering infrastructure 2.5-fold to 954 terabits per second by 2030.
“AI automates and accelerates the analysis of connection patterns,” a source in the Russian networking industry told Kommersant. The technology could analyze packet size and timing, session duration, traffic ratios, hosting providers, and neighboring IP addresses to indirectly identify VPN infrastructure.
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Industry sources cautioned that introducing AI could also increase false positives, resulting in legitimate traffic being blocked. One source estimated that the current error rate is already 5% to 6%, while another warned that early-stage AI systems could produce significant numbers of incorrect blocks.
The proposed AI layer would operate alongside Russia’s existing technical systems for countering threats, or TSPU, which are installed on telecom operators’ networks. A source noted that AI-based VPN detection would also require large-scale telemetry storage, computing clusters for model training, and infrastructure to distribute updated models to filtering nodes.
The push to detect VPN traffic is part of a broader effort by Moscow to tighten state control over mobile communications.
A day earlier, a draft Digital Development Ministry order surfaced requiring smartphones on Russia's future 5G networks to support Kuznyechik, an FSB-developed encryption algorithm, starting March 1, 2032.
Because the algorithm falls outside international 3GPP standards and must be built into modem chipsets, compliance could force Apple, Samsung, and Chinese manufacturers to produce Russia-specific hardware.
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