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Network The Internet Businesses China Communications Google

Nigerian Firm Takes Blame For Routing Google Traffic Through China (reuters.com) 56

Posted by BeauHD from the whoops-a-daisy dept.
Earlier today, it was reported that Google suffered a brief outage on Monday that pushed some of its traffic through networks in Russia, China, and Nigeria. Soon after Google said it would conduct an investigation, Nigeria's Main One Cable Company fessed up to the incident. According to Reuters, the company says it "accidentally caused the problem during a network upgrade." From the report: Main One said in an email that it had caused a 74-minute glitch by misconfiguring a border gateway protocol filter used to route traffic across the internet. That resulted in some Google traffic being sent through Main One partner China Telecom, the West African firm said. Even though Main One said it was to blame, some security experts said the incident highlighted concerns about the potential for hackers to conduct espionage or disrupt communications by exploiting known vulnerabilities in the way traffic is routed over the internet. Main One, which describes itself as a leading provider of telecom and network services for businesses in West Africa, said that it had investigated the matter and implemented new processes to prevent it from happening again.
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Nigerian Firm Takes Blame For Routing Google Traffic Through China More

Nigerian Firm Takes Blame For Routing Google Traffic Through China

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  • Nigerian scam!?

    • First thing came to my mind, with their reputation, WTF does any type of high level routing or anything concerning internet traffic have Nigerian control???
      • The way that it works in BGP-Land is that once you are designated an "Autonomous System" and assigned a AS number (kinda like having an SS7 ID in telecom land), you can update all of the other BGP routers around the world. It's the only way for the internet to function today. Not that it doesn't need additional security, but....

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by msauve ( 701917 )
        BGP was built based on trust relationships, long before there were Nigerian princes on the Internet.

      • Re: (Score:2, Redundant)

        by StormReaver ( 59959 )

        I had misread, "Nigeria's Main One Cable Company" as, "Nigeria's One Man Cable Company," which, frankly, would have made more sense.

    • The real question in this case would be who is holding the majority of Main One's debt. They were leveraged to the hilt in 2011, and since they were planning on raising another 300 million in 2015 I imagine that's still very much the case.

  • What with Google being Google and all. I suppose they figured they'd be able to blame it on someone else so this possible security breach info was okay to be let out into the public domain.
  • Hmmm Does China Telecom own a stake in Main One?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by mcl630 ( 1839996 )

      No, they do not.

  • Secure BGP (Score:5, Insightful)

    by cigawoot ( 1242378 ) on Tuesday November 13, 2018 @06:01PM (#57639650)

    We really need to figure out a way to secure BGP announcements.

    • We really need to figure out a way to secure BGP announcements.

      Wrong.

      We really need a way to figure out a solution instead of bitching about the same problem for fifteen fucking years.

      This is like bitching about WEP security in 2018. We kind of deserve it at this point.

    • We really need to figure out a way to secure BGP announcements.

      From whom?

  • I wonder if I'm to blame for all of that? (Score:5, Funny)

    by v1 ( 525388 ) on Tuesday November 13, 2018 @06:03PM (#57639656) Homepage Journal

    that prince said something bad would happen if I didn't help him cash in that inheritance

  • Nigerian Prince Needs you Help! (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward

    "Please dear sir,
    I am writing this to you because I am in need of your help. You see I have a vast fortune that I need expedited to your country. I am in the process of immigrating there but to avoid the taxes from your country I wish to transfer to you my fortune. Well wait! When I am successfully in your country I will of course need to take possession of that money, but of course you will be handsomely rewarded for this small trifle of your time! All I need you to do is to reroute your financial informat

  • Maybe its time for BGP (the protocol that is used by all these networks to talk to each other) to get some security so that people can't advertise routes for IP blocks they dont actually own.

    • Re:Time for better BGP security? (Score:4, Funny)

      by WaffleMonster ( 969671 ) on Tuesday November 13, 2018 @09:09PM (#57640320)

      Maybe its time for BGP (the protocol that is used by all these networks to talk to each other) to get some security so that people can't advertise routes for IP blocks they dont actually own.

      Great idea, you should totally do that.

      Tell all of the tier 1 networks not to advertise routes to your 'blocks' because they don't own them.

  • Some googling shows a number of articles that China is planning to dump billions of dollars into Nigeria in various areas. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that telecoms in Nigeria are also working closely with China and in exchange for money and favors, they are routing traffic -- ie: acting as an arm of the Chinese Intelligence agency.

    I think the West should keep an eye on all the countries that China gets involved with via the One Belt One Road initiative, because those could be countries that might opt

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by rtb61 ( 674572 )

      Time for a bit of reality, if your traffic is going anywhere near Nigeria, then it is already questionable. So traffic from US to Europe, would not touch Nigeria, etc. So Africa traffic routed through China, well, who the fuck cares. If secured routes get rerouted, then it is a problem but we all should know by now the US can tap into all the undersea cables done by US companies.

  • This article [zdnet.com] discusses the following research paper which analyses China's efforts to gain the capabilities that brought google down...

    https://scholarcommons.usf.edu... [usf.edu] ....whilst minimising the opportunity of the US and the west to create a similar attack against China.

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

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