Media: Safari and Chrome may stop displaying Russian sites

MOSCOW, 11 Oct — PRIME. Popular browsers – Microsoft’s Edge, Apple’s Safari and Google’s Chrome – may stop opening sites signed with Russian security certificates, a source in one of the IT companies warned in an interview with Izvestia.

A site certificate is its digital signature, which confirms the authenticity of the resource. Using a certificate, data is encrypted, before establishing a secure connection, the browser requests this document from the site. If there is no certificate or it is incorrect, the browser simply will not open the page.

According to the interlocutor of the publication, browser developers have the opportunity to revoke the certificate, and there have already been such examples outside of Russia. So, in Kazakhstan in 2019, residents were required to install national safety certificates for devices. After that, Google, Mozilla and Apple added the national certificate to the list of revoked – and two months later its implementation in Kazakhstan ceased.

At the same time, it should be borne in mind that there are many browsers now, said Vladimir Makarov, head of the information security audit department at T.Hunter. “And in addition to the well-known Chrome, Safari, Edge and Firefox, there is also Yandex.Browser, Brave, Vivaldi, Opera and others. Therefore, in case of blocking in some browsers, there is always an alternative,” he explained.

In order to maintain the functionality of Russian sites, the Ministry of Digital Development recommends using browsers that support Russian certificates, Yandex.Browser or Atom. As noted in the department, this is the easiest and most affordable way to provide access to all important resources, online services and online banking.