🎂 BGP: Time to Secure the 35 y.o. Core of the Internet





The recent release of the White House's "Roadmap to Enhancing Internet Routing Security" on September 3, 2024, addresses vulnerabilities in the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP), which was introduced in 1989 as part of the internet's development.


⚠️ Why is BGP security important?
If not properly secured, BGP can be exploited to misroute, intercept, or disrupt internet traffic, leading to espionage, data theft, and service outages. BGP security ensures the reliability and safety of global internet infrastructure.

⏳ Did we have enough time to implement BGP security?
Yes, but kind of... haven’t fully succeeded. While the basic hardening procedures for securing BGP are well understood, they have not been widely implemented. Protocols and tools like RPKI have been available for years, but many networks - particularly large ones - have been slow to adopt them. As a result, the current state of BGP security remains vulnerable.

Proof of BGP insecurity can be seen in several major incidents:
🔻Amazon Route Leak (2017): A misconfiguration by a Japanese ISP caused massive routing issues, leading to service disruptions for AWS users globally, affecting services like Slack and Reddit.
🔻Indosat BGP Hijack (2014): Indonesian ISP Indosat accidentally announced over 400,000 prefixes, leading to widespread routing issues and highlighting how a single BGP misconfiguration can affect the global internet.
🔻China Telecom BGP Hijack (2010): Around 15% of global internet traffic was misrouted through China for 18 minutes, raising concerns about data privacy and network security.

These incidents, and probably many others that are less visible, demonstrate the ongoing risks of unsecured BGP.

💡 What is the proposal now?
Governments and regulators, along with network experts, are advocating for the implementation of RPKI (Resource Public Key Infrastructure) and other cryptographic mechanisms to validate route announcements. This is in addition to the general hardening of BGP configurations, which should be standard practice.

🧐 What’s intriguing is that this feels like a blast from the past, showing how many systems remain in their original form or are less protected than today’s threats require. It also highlights how many critical technologies operate behind the scenes of modern IT and cybersecurity.

Ref:https://phoenixnap.com/kb/rpki

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