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Internet Traffic To Major Tech Firms Mysteriously Rerouted To Russia (securityweek.com)

wiredmikey writes: Internet traffic to some of the world's largest tech firms was briefly rerouted to Russia earlier this week in what appeared to be a Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) attack. Internet monitoring service BGPmon noticed that 80 IP prefixes for organizations such as Google, Microsoft, Apple, Facebook, NTT Communications, Twitch and Riot Games had been announced by a Russian Autonomous System (AS).

It happened twice on Tuesday and each time it only lasted for roughly three minutes. The first event took place between 04:43 and 04:46 UTC, and the second between 07:07 and 07:10 UTC. Despite being short-lived, BGPmon said the incidents were significant, including due to the fact that the announcements were picked up by several peers and some large ISPs, such as Hurricane Electric and Zayo in the U.S., Telstra in Australia, and NORDUnet, which is a joint project of several Nordic countries. The incident is rather suspicious, as the prefixes that were affected are all high profile destinations, as well as several more specific prefixes that aren't normally seen on the Internet.

4 of 106 comments (clear)

  1. MitM attacks by Rick+Schumann · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Seems to me you can complete quite a few MitM attacks in three minutes. Wonder how many people were compromised and/or how many websites were compromised? Or was this just a 'dry run' for a larger attack? Guess we won't know until the other shoe drops.

  2. BGP vs. Root name servers? by irving47 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I don't know the relationship (if any) between the two, but is it just coincidence this is happening less than a month after this:
    https://uawire.org/russia-offers-to-deploy-root-name-servers-in-brics-countries

    Also, is this something that can be attributed to the 'handing over' of certain services from the US to the UN?

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  3. Better title: by Orgasmatron · · Score: 5, Insightful

    A better title for the story: Major internet routers still inexplicably accepting unauthenticated BGP announcements

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  4. Re:Russia is a Problem by fahrbot-bot · · Score: 4, Informative

    The Constitution has provisions to handle this unfortunately and if Mike Pence isn't impeached as well, he's in and there's a pecking order as to who gets in determined as well if I recall correctly.

    Wikipedia has the current line of Presidential Succession:

    • 1 Vice President - Mike Pence (R)
    • 2 Speaker of the House of Representatives - Paul Ryan (R)
    • 3 President pro tempore of the Senate - Orrin Hatch (R)
    • 4 Secretary of State - Rex Tillerson (R)
    • 5 Secretary of the Treasury - Steven Mnuchin (R)
    • 6 Secretary of Defense - Jim Mattis (I)
    • 7 Attorney General - Jeff Sessions (R)
    • 8 Secretary of the Interior - Ryan Zinke (R)
    • 9 Secretary of Agriculture - Sonny Perdue (R)
    • 10 Secretary of Commerce - Wilbur Ross (R)
    • 11 Secretary of Labor - Alex Acosta (R)
    • 12 Secretary of Health and Human Services - Eric Hargan (R) Acting
    • 13 Secretary of Housing and Urban Development - Ben Carson (R)
    • – Secretary of Transportation - Elaine Chao (R) [ ineligible, not natural-born US citizen ]
    • 14 Secretary of Energy - Rick Perry (R)
    • 15 Secretary of Education - Betsy DeVos (R)
    • 16 Secretary of Veterans Affairs - David Shulkin (I)
    • 17 Secretary of Homeland Security - Kirstjen Nielsen (I)

    See *anyone* in there you'd really like to see as President?

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