Internet company Cloudflare sets servers in Ukraine and Russia to ‘brick themselves’ if they lose power

Internet infrastructure company Cloudflare has said that it will automatically shut down servers that go offline in Ukraine and Russia.

The web company, which is based in the United States, has removed all customer encryption keys from its data centres located in Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia. It is instead replacing them with a ‘keyless’ technology that allows encryption sessions to be terminated by a secure data centre – separate from the risk of being compromised.

“If any of our facilities or servers in Ukraine, Belarus, or Russia lose power or connectivity to the Internet, we have configured them to brick themselves”, Cloudflare chief executive Matthew Prince wrote.

“All data on disk is encrypted with keys that are not stored on site. Bricked machines will not be able to be booted unless a secure, machine-specific key that is not stored on site is entered.”

Cloudflare also says that it has “terminated any customers we have identified as tied to sanctions, including those related to Russian financial institutions, Russian influence campaigns, and the Russian-affiliated Donetsk and Luhansk governments”, and expects more sanctions to come from the American government.

However, while the company has received calls to terminate its service in Russia, “our conclusion, in consultation with those experts, is that Russia needs more Internet access, not less.”

This comes after Ukraine’s digital minister made calls for Russia to be sectioned off from the global internet entirely.

This request was denied by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), which said that “the internet is a decentralized system” and that its “mission does not extend to taking punitive actions, issuing sanctions, or restricting access against segments of the internet – regardless of the provocations”.

Many experts have suggested that such an action would hinder Russian citizens looking to get information from outside – especially as Russia has blocked access to Facebook and Twitter, as well as publications such as the BBC.

“We’ve seen a dramatic increase in requests from Russian networks to worldwide media, reflecting a desire by ordinary Russian citizens to see world news beyond that provided within Russia”, Mr Price wrote.

The country is already planning to disconnect itself from Western internet services in the face of cyber attacks, switching from foreign hosting services to those based in Russia.

That said, it is likely such a drastic action would only happen if the situation becomes exacerbated, as Russian minister Andrey Chernenko has said there are “no plans to disconnect the internet from the inside”.