Sometimes redundancy doesn’t help when it comes to network traffic routing. That system is based heavily on trust and an incorrect route being published can cause recursive loops and such that get propagated very quickly to everyone.
There was a case like this a few years back where a bad route got published by a small ISP, claiming they could handle traffic to a certain set of destinations, but then immediately trying to send that traffic back out again (because they couldn’t actually route to that destination), which bounced right back to them because of the bad route. It was propagated based on implicit trust and took down huge chunks of the Internet for a while
So could this be done maliciously? I’m just wondering about the Super Tuesday timing.
Yes, BGP Route Hijacking can be done maliciously although things like BGPSec can make it harder to pull off.
It affected the full 8 billion people in the world, not just the few hundred million on the US.
So? What does that matter, as long as it impacts the ability of poll watchers and legal support to communicate about illegal manipulation?
The point is, not everything is about the US.
This is an example of how you can make factually true statements that are contextually irrelevant.
When a major outage occurs on the day in US politics when 15 states all vote for their party nominees, it’s not unreasonable to question whether there was malicious intent.
You’re like a “not all men” or “all lives matter” person barging into a conversation, hijacking a perfectly reasonable discussion to push your agenda. Just stop.
When a major outage occurs on the day in US politics when 15 states all vote for their party nominees
In contests that are all foregone conclusions. And it’s a social media outage, not an outage affecting voting machines or something. It’s ridiculous that you would think that would have something to do with American primaries.
Did you even look up what other things might be happening around the world today before deciding that this had to be about the US?
oh I see, you just suck at reading comprehension
Please go reread the post you replied to. Nobody, myself included, “decided it had to be about the US”. They asked a question. They wanted to know if it could be malicious, and the thing that made them think about it was the fact it’s Super Tuesday.
The only thing I’ve ever been arguing is that it is reasonable to think about whether BGP could be abused for malicious intent when you realize it’s Super Tuesday. That’s it. It’s a reasonable connection to make that would precipitate the question. They didn’t even ask “is this because it’s Super Tuesday?”
But go off, chief. Can’t pass up a perfectly good opportunity to let your angst out
So could this be done maliciously? I’m just wondering about the Super Tuesday timing.
Hmm, something happened globally – must be about the US!
There are 8 billion people in the world and only 300m people in the US but…
So? What does that matter, as long as it impacts the ability of poll watchers and legal support to communicate about illegal manipulation?
Yep, it’s definitely about the US.
You’re talking about Border Gateway Protocol, BGP, route hijacking and it’s occasionally been a real headache over the years. Advertising routes used to be a more manual process so typos and incorrect entries, like what you’re talking about, we’re reasonably common. It was, and still can be, done maliciously too.
https://www.techtarget.com/searchsecurity/tip/How-does-BGP-hijacking-work-and-what-are-the-risks
Yup! BGP is an absolute mess and it is kind of a disgrace that it’s still the lynchpin of the internet