Reports have emerged about an event earlier this year when much of the Internet traffic from around the world was temporarily hijacked--rerouted through China Telecom. China Telecom claims the incident was an accident, but regardless of intent it demonstrates that the Internet itself can be hijacked, and raises concerns over how to prevent future occurrences.
McAfee's Dmitri Alperovitch provides a detailed recounting of the incident in a blog post. "At 15:54 GMT on April 8, 2010, McAfee detected a routing announcement from China's state-controlled telecommunications company, China Telecom, which advertised 15 percent of the world's Internet routes. For at least the next 18 minutes, up until China Telecom withdrew the announcement, a significant portion of the world's Internet traffic was redirected through China to reach its final destination. This included data from U.S. military and government networks, civilian organizations and U.S. allies such as South Korea, India and Australia. Commercial companies were also affected."
Alperovitch continues, "What happened to the redirected traffic during those 18 minutes? That's a great question but no one except China Telecom operators are in a position to answer it. E-mails, instant messages and VoIP calls could have been intercepted and logged, data could have also been changed as it was passing through the country as well. The possibilities are numerous and troubling, but definitive answers are unknown. It is also unclear whether the incident was deliberate. This is one of the biggest routing hijacks we have ever seen, and it could happen again since a number of major telecommunications companies routing a lot of Internet traffic have the same capability." Read more.
McAfee's Dmitri Alperovitch provides a detailed recounting of the incident in a blog post. "At 15:54 GMT on April 8, 2010, McAfee detected a routing announcement from China's state-controlled telecommunications company, China Telecom, which advertised 15 percent of the world's Internet routes. For at least the next 18 minutes, up until China Telecom withdrew the announcement, a significant portion of the world's Internet traffic was redirected through China to reach its final destination. This included data from U.S. military and government networks, civilian organizations and U.S. allies such as South Korea, India and Australia. Commercial companies were also affected."Alperovitch continues, "What happened to the redirected traffic during those 18 minutes? That's a great question but no one except China Telecom operators are in a position to answer it. E-mails, instant messages and VoIP calls could have been intercepted and logged, data could have also been changed as it was passing through the country as well. The possibilities are numerous and troubling, but definitive answers are unknown. It is also unclear whether the incident was deliberate. This is one of the biggest routing hijacks we have ever seen, and it could happen again since a number of major telecommunications companies routing a lot of Internet traffic have the same capability." Read more.