BGP hijack on Google from a Nigerian ISP

Google BGP : A tiny Nigerian ISP hijacked traffic destined for Google's data centers. The incident, called a BGP hijack, happened yesterday, Nov. 12, between 13:12 p.m. and 14:35 p.m. Pacific Time, according to Google.

The incident was first identified and reported by BGPmon, an online service that monitors traffic routes through the largest Internet ISPs.BGP hijack

According to BGPmon, the incident was caused by a small Nigerian ISP company named MainOne Cable Company (AS37282), which announced to nearby access providers that it was hosting IP addresses that normally corresponded to the Google Data Centers network.

BGPmon reports that a Nigerian ISP said it was "accidentally" hosting 212 Google prefixes in five different waves, for a total of 74 minutes.

The routing announcement leaked to other internet service providers, inviting more and more providers to send to Google traffic on the MainOne network instead of the regular BGP routes.

According to experts from ThousandEyes:

"We noticed that this leak was mainly driven by transit providers and did not affect consumers' ISPs." said Ameet Naik, director of ThousandEyes.

“All traffic hit the great firewall, terminating it of China Telecom,” Naik added.

So whatever traffic reached the Nigerian company was later abandoned, which did not allow to connect to Google networks.

The incident has naturally caused great concern online, especially for cyber security and networking experts.

BGP hijacks are considered extremely dangerous as they allow unauthorized networks to monitor, analyze, and record sensitive information that could later be decrypted.

We do not know if the "bad" traffic redirection through the Nigerian company was intentional or accidental, but the problem still exists in BGP itself, a protocol developed in the 1980s that has no security features and is still used until today for the interconnection of ISP networks.

_____________________________

iGuRu.gr The Best Technology Site in Greecefgns

every publication, directly to your inbox

Join the 2.100 registrants.

Written by giorgos

George still wonders what he's doing here ...

Leave a reply

Your email address is not published. Required fields are mentioned with *

Your message will not be published if:
1. Contains insulting, defamatory, racist, offensive or inappropriate comments.
2. Causes harm to minors.
3. It interferes with the privacy and individual and social rights of other users.
4. Advertises products or services or websites.
5. Contains personal information (address, phone, etc.).