Internet can be taken down through the BGP

This is a little disconcerting. Basically the internet can be taken down through the border gateway protocol in about an hour (Its a protocol that tells internet traffic how to get to its destination). There is no security to verify that the BGP routes are legit (they auto update each other in order to know where everything is) so some one could put out some fake BGP packets and have routes go to the wrong place (where they usually just get dropped). This has happened a few times already, but more due to mistakes in setting up new routers then actual malicious intent, which took down certain parts of the internet for certain people. What is really odd is that this is a known issue since before 1995. The problem with a fix is that every one would have to be on board, and large company’s usually only act when its in their best financial interest. So to sum it up, until it is actually exploited in a large and devastating way, not much is going to be done about it.

You can read the article here.

Leave a Comment


NOTE - You can use these HTML tags and attributes:
<a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>