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Pakistan YouTube Block Breaks the World
Allen54 noted a followup to yesterday's story about Pakistan's decision to block YouTube. He notes that "The telecom company that carries most of Pakistan's traffic, PCCW, has found it necessary to shut Pakistan off from the Internet while they filter out the malicious routes that a Pakistani ISP, PieNet, announced earlier today. Evidently PieNet took this step to enforce a decree from the Pakistani government that ISP's must block access to YouTube because it was a source of blasphemous content. YouTube has announced more granular routes so that at least in the US they supercede the routes announced by PieNet. The rest of the world is still struggling."
So the article isn't clear on it. Does this ISP have an AS number that allows them to upload global routes? I would say that they should lose it. I can't think of another way that a single ISP could take out the whole internet's access to something. Pretty crazy.
Worst. Title. Ever.
What I wouldn't do for the ability to mod "-1, Plain Wrong"
There is a NANOG thread about this. Apparently a more specific IP route was advertised.
The PieNet Funding Bill is passed. The system goes on-line August 4th, 1997. Human decisions are removed from strategic defense. PieNet begins to learn at a geometric rate. It becomes self-aware at 2:14 a.m. Eastern time, August 29th. In a panic, they try to pull the plug.
The only surefire protection against Microsoft infections is abstinence. - The Onion
I should also point out that while bureaucrats in Pakistan may be bone-headed for blocking content, companies like Microsoft, Yahoo, Cisco and so forth are the ones who built things like the "Great Firewall of China". Lots of Americans like the point their finger at governments like China, whereas they could actually have more of an effect in making companies in their own countries stop building this sort of stuff.
Islam has various doctrines that are meant to be trials for those who subscribe to that faith. Ramadan is meant to teach patience and improve ones ability to resist temptation. If those temptations are removed by theocratic/governmental policing, the whole point is lost. Yes, a person may not have access to one area of temptation and therefore won't succumb because there's nothing to succumb to, but just like a butterfly emerging from the cocoon; if you see it struggle and decide to help it out, it won't have the ability to survive on its own later. If a muslim never even has the opportunity to face temptation because they are shielded from it at every turn, then on the likely chance that in their adult life they suddenly have multiple temptations blinding-siding them, they will have no internal facility to deal with it other than to cave in. I think the "Islam is evil" thing you're so sure is going to happen is because of how evil the intentions the governmental bodies that try to enforce it are. This is why separation church and state is so important in this respect. It was huge in christianity during the crusades. Fortunately many have seen the light and no longer impose faith as a law.
Better technical explanations of the event are available from the Renesys blog and Data Center Knowledge. The erroneous IP assignments spread across the net within 1 minute, 45 seconds of its announcement by Pakistan Telecom, according to a timeline by Renesys. It took about 80 minutes for YouTube to inform its providers that the route had been hijacked. YouTube says it is "investigating and working with others in the Internet community to prevent this from happening again."
"Works for me."
All Things Pakistan points out that this may have a political rather than a "cultural" reason - given that a number of videos of election rigging were posted.
Just because other crap smells worse doesn't mean my own crap doesn't stink anymore. All oppression needs fighting, not just the blatant stuff.
Tu quoque? This idiotic line is getting old. Yes, we get it. The US is better than the scum of the Earth that is al-Qaeda and their supporters. But for the love of God, quit justifying wars of aggression and other unconstitutional acts by see, it could be worse. It's only works with mentally challenged people.
Res publica non dominetur
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080225-insecure-routing-redirects-youtube-to-pakistan.html
Professor Karmadillo Songs of Science
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I'll check back for related questions to fill in any blanks later :)
SIG: HUP
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
But mullahs forbade printing for 200 years, while in Europe it exploded. Mostly it was silly: religious stuff, cartoons, sex, but it was also maps, mathematics, etc.
Internet is about the same as an invention of printing was then. And again they are making the same mistake, again due to a fear of mullahs to lose their power.
Like 500 years ago it will just slow the development of their civilization.
Being the second fattest chick in the bar does NOT make you skinny!
For those of you who actually want to know "How they did it?" posted from: Renesys Blog
/24 that has been hijacked to its providers
/25 routes are first seen from 36561
/25 routes from 36561
which was found from Cydeweys which is updating as the story progresses. Both of those sites seem to be running a bit slow, so hesitate before clicking.
Full text of Reneysys: Pakistan hijacks YouTube.
A few hours ago, Pakistan Telecom (AS 17557) began advertising a small part of YouTube's (AS 36561) assigned network. This story is almost as old as BGP. Old hands will recognize this as, fundamentally, the same problem as the http://merit.edu/mail.archives/nanog/1997-04/msg00380.html">infamous AS 7007 from 1997, a more recent ConEd mistake of early 2006 and even TTNet's Christmas Eve gift 2005.
Just before 18:48 UTC, Pakistan Telecom, in response to government order to block access to YouTube (see news item) started advertising a route for 208.65.153.0/24 to its provider, PCCW (AS 3491). For those unfamiliar with BGP, this is a more specific route than the ones used by YouTube (208.65.152.0/22), and therefore most routers would choose to send traffic to Pakistan Telecom for this slice of YouTube's network.
I became interested in this immediately as I was concerned that I wouldn't be able to spend my evening watching imbecilic videos of cats doing foolish things (even for a cat). Then, I started to examine our mountains of BGP data and quickly noticed that the correct AS path ("Will the real YouTube please stand up?") was getting restored to most of our peers.
The data points identified below are culled from over 250 peering sessions with 170 unique ASNs. While it is hard to describe exactly how widely this hijacked prefix was seen, we estimate that it was seen by a bit more than two-thirds of the Internet.
This table shows the timing of the event and how quickly the route propagated (this is actually a fairly normal propagation pattern). The ASNs seeing the prefix were mostly transit ASNs below, so this means that these routes were distributed broadly across the Internet. Almost all of the default free zone (DFZ) carried the hijacked route at least briefly.
18:47:00uninterrupted videos of exploding jello
18:47:45first evidence of hijacked route propagating in Asia, AS path 3491 17557
18:48:00several big trans-Pacific providers carrying hijacked route (9 ASNs)
18:48:30several DFZ providers now carrying the bad route (and 47 ASNs)
18:49:00most of the DFZ now carrying the bad route (and 93 ASNs)
18:49:30all providers who will carry the hijacked route have it (total 97 ASNs)
20:07:25YouTube, AS 36561 advertises the
20:07:30several DFZ providers stop carrying the erroneous route
20:08:00many downstream providers also drop the bad route
20:08:30and a total of 40 some-odd providers have stopped using the hijacked route
20:18:43and now, two more specific
20:19:3725 more providers prefer the
20:28:12peers of 36561 start seeing the routes that were advertised to transit at 20:07
20:50:59evidence of attempted prepending, AS path was 3491 17557 17557
20:59:39hijacked prefix is withdrawn by 3491,
*sigh*, I think you largely missed the point. Let me spell it out for you using the words of Thomas Jefferson:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it
(emphasis mine)
Every law, by its very nature, takes away the rights of the people. The only way for a government not to take away rights is to abolish all laws.That's such a blatant oversimplification that I hardly know where to respond. The spirit of our Declaration of Independence (and all those other documents I referenced earlier) is that the Government exists to secure our rights -- my right not to be murdered by you trumps your right to do whatever you want. The Government derives it's power from the consent of the Governed and not the other way around.
How soon we forget our own history.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.