Google Analytics

Russian Websites Remain Dependent on Foreign SSL Certificates and Analytics Despite Sanctions

A Russian security researcher developed an open-source tool to scan websites for dependencies on foreign services that could be cut off abruptly. The scan of 50 major Russian sites including banks, retailers, telecoms, airlines, delivery services, online schools and government portals revealed that servers have largely been migrated domestically. However, critical components such as SSL certificates, analytics platforms and fonts remain tied to overseas providers. 43 out of 50 sites still use foreign SSL certificates, primarily from Belgian GlobalSign and American Let's Encrypt, while only four rely on the Russian NUC certificate from the Ministry of Digital Development. The study also highlights legal obligations under Roskomnadzor rules effective since March 2023 requiring prior notification for cross-border personal data transfers. Many sites continue using Google Analytics, Google Fonts and reCAPTCHA without realizing the compliance and resilience risks. The tool assigns letter grades from A to F based on the number of foreign dependencies detected.

Distributed Crawler Poses as Human Visitor to Evade Analytics and Ad Filters

A detailed investigation revealed a sophisticated distributed crawler that successfully mimicked legitimate human browsing behavior across multiple unrelated websites. The crawler generated realistic events in Google Analytics while avoiding ad script loading and resource chains that would confirm genuine user sessions. Server logs showed consistent patterns of fake search engine referrers, internal navigation with fabricated Referer headers, and selective requests limited mostly to images returning 404 errors. Analysts built a graph-based detection system that correlated events across sites to expose the coordinated activity despite individual requests appearing benign. The campaign rotated browser signatures and IP addresses frequently, making single-site rate limiting ineffective. The case demonstrates how modern crawlers can exploit Measurement Protocol and incomplete bot detection to consume server resources without contributing to revenue.