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Can anyone with more knowledge comment on plausibility of this? Google Cache: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:4lR05JZoeUMJ:www.nationaldef

by pc 16y ago

Can anyone with more knowledge comment on plausibility of this? Google Cache: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:4lR05JZoeUMJ:www.nationaldefensemagazine.org/blog/Lists/Posts/Post.aspx%3FID%3D249+http://www.nationaldefensemagazine.org/blog/Lists/Posts/Post.aspx%3FID%3D249&hl=en&gl=us&strip=1 http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:4lR05JZ...

tptacek 16y ago
Presumably, a broken BGP advertisement. These days, they create breathless "news" stories like this one. Back in the '90s, when small-town ISPs managed to accidentally advertise short paths to huge chunks of the Internet, they broke the whole Internet. It's hard to get too wound up about it. If you're worried that China is going to MITM your SSL sessions, remove their certificate from your cert store. If I was a Chinese supercyberspy, I probably wouldn't do something as blatant as routing the entire Internet to China just to get traffic I wanted. I think I'd do something much more akin to spearphishing an overseas Google employee to get onto their internal network.
- erik 16y ago
  "Also, the list of hijacked data just happened to include preselected destinations around the world that encompassed military, intelligence and many civilian networks in the United States and other allies such as Japan and Australia" If this claim is valid, it would seem likely that the bad BGP advertisement was not accidental.
  - pyre 16y ago
    If it wasn't accidental, then I doubt it was a serious operation. Most likely a fishing expedition. Testing the waters to see what the reaction is and what data (or kinds of data) they are able to harvest.
    - shykes 16y ago
      China just validated that they can intercept trafic for malicious intent, with no international retaliation to speak of. How is that not serious?
      - tptacek 16y ago
        Because so can practically any random company.
      - pyre 16y ago
        By 'serious operation,' I mean something they were after a specific goal, vs just probing for weaknesses.
      - johnthedebs 16y ago
        "This happens accidentally a few times per year, Alperovitch said." They aren't the only ones.
- xtacy 16y ago
  Internet routing is supposed to be a distributed system alright, but most of the internet services (except China's) are not hosted in China. Wouldn't it be easy to add a policy to BGP that effectively blacklists (or gives a low priority) to routers in Chinese AS's? I guess what would be difficult is to reach a consensus on adding the above route.. oh well. Also relevant: http://asert.arbornetworks.com/2008/02/internet-routing-insecuritypakistan-nukes-youtube/ http://asert.arbornetworks.com/2008/02/internet-routing-inse...
  - paolomaffei 16y ago
    ever heard about Net Neutrality?
    - dedward 16y ago
      This has nothing to do with net neutrality - we're talking about routing policy, not traffic policy.
amalcon 16y ago
What the article describes can absolutely be done. Well, sort of. China can't advertise its routes as the "fastest", because internet routing cares little about performance[1], but they can otherwise work to make them an attractive option. It's certainly plausible that they could have pulled in 15% of global traffic. It's not plausible that they could have pulled in any traffic they so choose, but (depending on where their border is placed) they could have grabbed most of it. Also, it's not necessarily obvious to a casual observer what they could have grabbed. [1] Internet routing in practice is based mostly on politics, a little bit on cost, and basically just uses performance as a tie-breaker.

by pc 16y ago

tptacek 16y ago

Presumably, a broken BGP advertisement. These days, they create breathless "news" stories like this one. Back in the '90s, when small-town ISPs managed to accidentally advertise short paths to huge chunks of the Internet, they broke the whole Internet. It's hard to get too wound up about it. If you're worried that China is going to MITM your SSL sessions, remove their certificate from your cert store. If I was a Chinese supercyberspy, I probably wouldn't do something as blatant as routing the entire Internet to China just to get traffic I wanted. I think I'd do something much more akin to spearphishing an overseas Google employee to get onto their internal network.

erik 16y ago
"Also, the list of hijacked data just happened to include preselected destinations around the world that encompassed military, intelligence and many civilian networks in the United States and other allies such as Japan and Australia" If this claim is valid, it would seem likely that the bad BGP advertisement was not accidental.
- pyre 16y ago
  If it wasn't accidental, then I doubt it was a serious operation. Most likely a fishing expedition. Testing the waters to see what the reaction is and what data (or kinds of data) they are able to harvest.
  - shykes 16y ago
    China just validated that they can intercept trafic for malicious intent, with no international retaliation to speak of. How is that not serious?
    - tptacek 16y ago
      Because so can practically any random company.
    - pyre 16y ago
      By 'serious operation,' I mean something they were after a specific goal, vs just probing for weaknesses.
    - johnthedebs 16y ago
      "This happens accidentally a few times per year, Alperovitch said." They aren't the only ones.
xtacy 16y ago
Internet routing is supposed to be a distributed system alright, but most of the internet services (except China's) are not hosted in China. Wouldn't it be easy to add a policy to BGP that effectively blacklists (or gives a low priority) to routers in Chinese AS's? I guess what would be difficult is to reach a consensus on adding the above route.. oh well. Also relevant: http://asert.arbornetworks.com/2008/02/internet-routing-insecuritypakistan-nukes-youtube/ http://asert.arbornetworks.com/2008/02/internet-routing-inse...
- paolomaffei 16y ago
  ever heard about Net Neutrality?
  - dedward 16y ago
    This has nothing to do with net neutrality - we're talking about routing policy, not traffic policy.

amalcon 16y ago

What the article describes can absolutely be done. Well, sort of. China can't advertise its routes as the "fastest", because internet routing cares little about performance[1], but they can otherwise work to make them an attractive option. It's certainly plausible that they could have pulled in 15% of global traffic. It's not plausible that they could have pulled in any traffic they so choose, but (depending on where their border is placed) they could have grabbed most of it. Also, it's not necessarily obvious to a casual observer what they could have grabbed. [1] Internet routing in practice is based mostly on politics, a little bit on cost, and basically just uses performance as a tie-breaker.