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For 18 Minutes, 15% of the Internet Routed Through China
olsmeister writes "For 18 minutes this past April, 15% of the world's internet traffic was routed through servers in China. This includes traffic from both .gov and .mil US TLDs." The crazy thing is that this happened months ago, and nobody noticed. Hope you're encrypting your super-secret stuff.
The crazy thing is that this happened months ago, and nobody noticed.
Odd, Slashdot reported the day afterward: Chinese ISP Hijacks the Internet (Again).
My work here is dung.
when that 18mins is over and all their stuff goes through American servers
did you forget to take your meds?
There are plenty of reasons to use encryption but the Chinese government just isn't one of them for me. If I view something they don't like, what exactly are they going to do? I suppose they could block my access but it's not like I would get thrown in a Chinese prison.
I have a lot more to worry about from identity thieves, scams and heck, my own government.
The Anti-Blog
Chinese Headlines claim for a period of nearly 21,018,240 minutes...nearly 100% of Internet traffic has been routed through the United States....wonder if they're worried about the balance of power?
My God can beat up your God. Just kidding...don't take offense. I know there's no God.
Or it is.
It is just that the USA has forgotten the Internet basics. It has also forgotten major past incidents like that case from 10 years back when one small ISP in Florida directed most of the Internet traffic through itself and fell over.
USA internet has very little redundancy. Most of the peering is private, in very few locations and the routes announced by ISPs to each other are not filtered based on declared ISP announcement policy. As the few remaining ISPs are so big the announcement lists have grown to a size where filtering them poses a technical difficulty. In addition to that because the ISPs are big they trust each others change control that routes for blocks which are "somebody's elses will not be announced". Bad Idea (TM). And that is why this was possible in the first place.
Compared to that in Europe most of the peering is public and nearly all ISPs heavily filter the route announcements coming from other peers. A Chinese ISP which would announce blocks it does not own would simply be ignored. It is of course possible for the ISP in question to add the policy to its official export list, post it to RIPE, get it propagated to other ISPs and then announce the routes, but that will take time and will have a big chance to be noticed. It will also be clear that there is "no mistake" there so the ISP in question will really get kicked off the internet for this one.
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
http://www.sigsegv.cx/
It's an API that lets you randomly write to memory addresses on their servers.
How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
An hour later.....
I wanted to read them again.
No brain, no pain.
Sorry to be AC.
as an IP engineer at a major backbone provider, I can safely comment on the hyperbole of this incident.
China Telcom -4134- would have to either send very/more specific routes and get max prefixes blown out, or send very general routes and loose to smaller routes.
yes, for a little while any "tier 1" player, or major government player, can convince another provider to send routes to an inappropriate AS, the game soon ends. anyone who isn't running at the very least a max prefix is a cluetard and needs their peering revoked anyway. From my 20%, 4134 is always a hair's breath away from getting a smackdown.
tldr; they can't really steal the whole internet, but we need to watch out for smaller route hyjacking.