An unusual internet hassle occurred this week when the internet traffic of various companies like Facebook, Google, Amazon, and others was redirected to Rostelecom, a Russian telecommunications company. It was an extremely suspicious incident in which the traffic for around 200 of the top content delivery networks was transferred to the Russian telecom provider.
Rostelecom Reportedly Hijacks Traffic from Major Companies
The incident was bizarre, and more than 8800 traffic routes on the internet from over 200 networks were affected. It continued for almost an hour. The Impacted companies were the leading content delivery organizations, along with the cloud computing giants. The biggest victims were indeed Akamai, Lease web, GoDaddy, Google, Amazon, Digital Ocean, and Cloudflare, to name a few.
BGP Hijack may be accidental or intentional
Experts refer to the incident as the BGP Hijack. The Border Gateway Protocol controls and routes the traffic on the internet between the various networks across the world. When the attackers quickly hacked the complete system and accidentally, the internet traffic was rerouted.
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The BGP hackers easily hijacked the system and logged the traffic information for later use. The hackers can decrypt the data and use it to misuse the internet systems. They can use the recorded data to analyze and use in the cryptology.
Rostelecom is not the first time involved in the hijacking
Rostelecom has earlier also been engaged in the BGP hijacks. These hijacks are extremely dangerous for the internet as some people can be doing it again and again regularly. Experts say that the Hijacks may not be mere accidents and conducted with an intent to steal information.
Internet Experts Worried about BGP Hijack
Internet experts have pointed out time and again that the BGP Hijacks can be intentional and may be shown as accidental. The problem is that there is not an easy way out to tell the difference between a deliberate hijack or an accidental one.
Hijacking can be state-sponsored
Most of the time, the Hijacks are considered state-controlled in countries like Russia and China, which are quite suspicious concerning their political ecosystem.
BGPMon Founder says It could be accidental
The BGPMon Founder Andree Toonk published a note on Twitter in which he detailed the hijack and noted that it could be accidental,
“For what it’s worth: I don’t think they intended to announce this to the rest of the world (hijack). What we saw here, by accident, is that they treat these (new, more specific) prefixes special inside their network. Likely for some kind of “Traffic Engineering” reason.”