BGP Route Leaks & Hijacks
The internet operates on trust. When a network erroneously claims it is the best path to a destination, traffic follows, resulting in massive black holes or interception.
Historical Major Incidents
A leak occurs when routing policies are misconfigured (e.g., a customer announces their provider's routes to another provider). A hijack is often malicious, claiming space you don't own. RPKI is the primary defense against this.
| Date | Originator | Victim | Impact |
|---|---|---|---|
| Feb 2008 | Pakistan Telecom (AS17557) | YouTube (AS36561) | Attempted domestic censorship leaked globally, taking YouTube offline worldwide for 2 hours. |
| Apr 2010 | China Telecom (AS23724) | US Govt/Military | 15% of global internet traffic was routed through China for 18 minutes due to false prefix announcements. |
| Jun 2015 | Telekom Malaysia (AS4788) | Level 3 (AS3356) | TM leaked over 170,000 routes to Level 3, which accepted them, causing severe global slowdowns. |
| Nov 2018 | MainOne (AS37282) | Google (AS15169) | Nigerian ISP leaked routes, dropping Google traffic into China Telecom, causing an hour-long outage. |
| Oct 2021 | Facebook (AS32934) | Self-Inflicted | Config error withdrew Facebook's own routes globally. DNS failed. Facebook disappeared for 6 hours. |
Tool: Prefix Specificity Risk Scorer
BGP prefers the most specific route. Check if your IP announcement strategy is vulnerable to a more specific hijack.
The Mechanism of a Leak
A route leak happens when an AS violates Valley-Free routing. For example, if a small ISP buys transit from AT&T and Verizon, it should only announce its own IPs to them. If the ISP accidentally takes the routes it learns from AT&T and announces them to Verizon, Verizon might see that small ISP as a shortcut to AT&T, crushing the ISP's infrastructure with backbone traffic.
FAQ
Can we just filter bad routes?
Yes, but it's hard. Tier 1 networks have hundreds of thousands of customers. Maintaining accurate filter lists (IRR databases) is administratively heavy, leading to stale or permissive filters.