The Soviet Union was dissolved more than thirty years ago, but the former transcontinental state still has its own .su TLD.
The .su domain extension isn’t exactly mainstream. There are a little over 100,000 active domains, with .su extensions reportedly proving popular among cybercriminals.
Experts have cited outdated terms and a lack of enforcement as historical reasons for the cybercrime appeal. However, recent actions show that the Russian Institute for Public Networks, which maintains the .su domain, can certainly intervene.
TorrentGalaxy Loses Control over .SU Domain
A few days ago popular torrent site TorrentGalaxy lost control of its .su domain name. The domain stopped resolving out of the blue and upon closer inspection, was found to be no longer delegated.
Whois research confirms that the domain’s status is listed as ‘REGISTERED, NOT DELEGATED,’ without providing any further detail.
TorrentGalaxy informs TorrentFreak that its Russian registrar R01 hasn’t sent any information about the issue and all questions remain unanswered. The torrent site hasn’t heard anything from the Russian Institute for Public Networks, the .su registry, either.
“We haven’t gotten any notification of the disconnection. It still shows as active on our side. In fact, the weird EPP status on the domain whois and the domain not resolving to anything have been the only info for us as well,” the operator explains.
TorrentFreak reached out to both the registry and registrar but we haven’t heard back. This means that the exact reason for the domain revocation remains unknown.
Government Connection
Since the DNS zone was effectively removed, it appears that the registry intervened. This can happen for a variety of reasons, including court orders, voluntary actions, or Government instructions.
Russia already requires Internet providers and search engines to block hundreds of thousands of sites, for reasons that include copyright infringement. Since the start of the Ukraine conflict, these types of ‘censorship’ efforts certainly haven’t slowed down.
Many of these blocking efforts are managed by Russian telecoms watchdog Roskomnadzor. That’s highly relevant since the government organization has reportedly controlled the .su domain zone since 2020.
At this point, we can only speculate on the reasons for the domain revocation. Copyright issues may very well play a role, but TorrentGalaxy suspects that the ongoing conflict in Ukraine is a likely reason too.
“Considering the timing with the Ukraine conflict getting worse, and after being stonewalled for almost two weeks by the registrar, we’re left to conclude the site is now branded as Western propaganda by Russian authorities,” TorrentGalaxy informs us.
Ukraine Censorship or Copyright Enforcement?
TorrentGalaxy notes that there’s plenty of content on the site that could be seen as problematic by the Russian authorities. This includes documentaries covering topics such as Navalny or the Ukraine conflict, which are effectively banned in Russia.
“Since nobody is willing to give us as much as a reason for suddenly disconnecting the domain, and considering .su’s known reputation for harboring pretty much anything but the worst, us being a victim of the Russian censorship laws seems to be the reasonable explanation.
TorrentGalaxy’s explanation could make sense, but for the time being, there’s no confirmation. What this incident shows, however, is that the Russian Institute for Public Networks is able to intervene. There are currently 107,070 .su domain names registered and 6,603 of these domains are not delegated.
After doing some additional research we found that several other .su and .ru domains were also recently revoked, including 123series.ru and politologia.ru.
Some of the revoked domains appear on official Russian blocklists. This means that they may have been banned by Roskomnadzor or targeted through a court order.
Interestingly, TorrentGalaxy.su doesn’t appear to be blacklisted. However, the main TorrentGalaxy.to domain name was banned by Russia in 2020, after a court deemed it to be copyright infringing.
