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News: After Telegram was briefly restricted by the Union government,the messaging platform’s founder and CEO, Pavel Durov, alleged that access to the app was being compromised through a “rogue method” called Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) hijacking.
About BGP hijacking
- The Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) is the Internet’s routing system.
- It tells networks across the world how to reach specific IP addresses.
- It was developed in the late 1980s.
- How it works:
- Every major telecom operator, cloud provider, content delivery network and internet service provider runs an Autonomous System (AS), a large network identified by a unique number.
- BGP is the protocol which these networks use to tell how traffic through these networks should reach a specific IP address (destination).
- Neither the destination nor the route is authenticated.
- Without BGP, networks would not know where to send data once it left their own systems, making global internet connectivity virtually impossible.
- BGP hijack: If a network accidentally publishes incorrect routing information or deliberately announces routes that do not belong to it, traffic can be redirected through the wrong path. It is commonly known as a BGP hijack.
- Threats associated: BGP hijacks can expose personal information, enable theft, extortion, and state-level espionage, and disrupt security-critical transactions, including in the financial sector.
