On April 8, the networking hardware that routes traffic on the Internet got new marching orders: Requests for data from 15 percent of Internet addresses—including Dell.com, Yahoo.com, Microsoft.com, and U.S. government sites—were directed to go through China.Incidents like this are known as Internet hijackings. Although they generally aren't the result of malevolence, they can upend the usual efficiency of Internet routing so badly that sites get knocked offline. The April hijacking happened when a small Chinese Internet service provider updated its routing information, advertising that its network was the best way to get to various blocks of Internet addresses assigned to government agencies and companies worldwide. China's state-owned ISP, China Telecom, duly propagated the updates using the lingua franca of Internet routers, the border gateway protocol (BGP).
To read the full, original article click on this link: Internet Hijackings Prove Hard to Stop - Technology Review
Author: Robert Lemos
