Internet traffic goes through whatever path will get it to it's destination fastest. Big Routers advertise to each other how long it will take to get somewhere

Internet traffic goes through whatever path will get it to it's destination fastest. Big Routers advertise to each other how long it will take to get somewhere through them. There have been times when either due to bugs, or due to a desire to slurp traffic, some machines have falsely advertised shorter routes causing traffic to pas through routes traffic wouldn't normally pass through. This time it was somewhere in Russia. This can be mitigated like most malicious acts / network errors if you write clever enough rules, but is hard because you have to identify the bad actors, or paths that lead to them.