New photo Google is hit by 'worst ever' internet hijack

Google has been hit by an attack that re-routed the firm's global internet traffic through servers located in Russia, China and Nigeria as part of a 'wargame experiment'.

Security experts have spoken out about the data diversion, which may be a prelude to more widescale attacks in the future by the three nations involved.

Information from Google searches, cloud-hosting services and the company's bundle of collaboration tools for businesses - known as G Suite - were all affected.

Google is downplaying the incident, described by one expert as the 'worst ever' in the firm's history, saying it does not believe it was malicious.

The firm has yet to confirm the exact nature of the data affected, as well as how many users have been put at risk, with millions potentially in the firing line.

Experts are concerned about the prospect of Russia, China and Nigeria gaining access to users' private data by monitoring the re-routed traffic.

The attack may be a sign of things to come as cyber warfare steps up between the West and its global competitors.

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Google has been hit by an attack that the re-routed the firm's global internet traffic through servers located in Russia, China and Nigeria. Security experts have spoken out about the data diversion, which they believe was part of a 'wargame experiment' (stock image)

The diversion 'at a minimum caused a massive denial of service to G Suite and Google Search' and 'put valuable Google traffic in the hands of ISPs in countries with a long history of Internet surveillance,' network intelligence company ThousandEyes said in a blog post.  

Service interruptions lasted for nearly one and a half hours and ended about 10:30pm GMT (5:30pm EST), the San Francisco company said.

In addition to Russian and Chinese telecommunications firms, a Nigerian internet service provider (ISP) was also involved in re-routing the traffic.

A Google status page noted that 'access to some Google services was impacted' and said the cause was 'external to Google.' The company offered little additional information.

MailOnline has contacted Google for a comment but had not received a reply at the time of publication.

The type of traffic misdirection employed, known as border gateway protocol (BGP) hijacking, can knock essential services offline and facilitate espionage and financial theft. 

It can result either from misconfiguration - human error, essentially - or from malicious action.

Google is downplaying the incident, described by one expert as the 'worst ever' in the firm's history, saying it does not believe it was malicious. A Google status page noted that 'access to some Google services was impacted' and said the cause was 'external to Google' (stock)

DOES CHINA HAVE HISTORY HIJACKING INTERNET TRAFFIC?

Researchers reported in October that a Chinese telecoms firms had been hijacking internet traffic on a regular basis.

Chris Demchak of the United States Naval War College and Yuval Shavitt of the Tel Aviv University in Israel traced global border gateway protocol (BGP) announcements.

They discovered several attacks by state-run China Telecom over the past few years, according to reports in Secure Reading.

They found that China redirected traffic between Canada and Korean government networks to its point of presence (PoP) in Toronto for six months in 2016. 

Internet traffic normally takes a short route which is through Canada, the U.S and then to Korea.

Traffic between Scandinavia and Japan was also hijacked between April and May 2017.

PoPs manage traffic between all the smaller networks called autonomous systems (AS).

China has ten PoPs in North America, but it doesn't allow any foreign country PoPs in their country.

The traffic between two autonomous systems are managed with the help of Border Gateway Protocol (BGP).

BGP hijacks can also occur by mistake if this system is set up incorrectly.  

Most of BGP hijacking attacks nowadays are the work of government agencies or criminal organisations with access or control of strategically placed ISPs, experts warn.

'Building a successful BGP hijack attack is complex, but much easier with the support of a complicit and preferably large scale ISP that is more likely to be included as a central transit point among a sea of ASs,' the report said. 

'China Telecom has ten strategically placed, Chinese controlled internet 'points of presence'4 (PoPs) across the internet backbone of North America.'

'Vast rewards can be reaped from the hijacking, diverting, and then copying of information-rich traffic going into or crossing the United States and Canada – often unnoticed and then delivered with only small delays.'  

The full findings of the study were published in the Journal of the Military Cyber Professionals Association.

Most network traffic to Google services - 94 per cent as of October 27 - is encrypted, which shields it from prying eyes even if diverted.

Alex Henthorn-Iwane, an executive at ThousandEyes, called Monday's incident the worst affecting Google that his company has seen.

He said he suspected nation-state involvement because the traffic was effectively landing at state-run China Telecom.

A recent study by U.S. Naval War College and Tel Aviv University scholars found that China systematically hijacks and diverts U.S. internet traffic.

Google said it had no reason to believe the traffic hijacking was malicious. It did not explain why.

Much of the internet's underpinnings are built on trust, a relic of the good intentions its designers assumed of users. 

One consequence: little can be done if a nation-state or someone with access to a major internet provider - or exchange - decides to reroute traffic.

Mr Henthorn-Iwane says Monday's hijacking may have been 'a wargame experiment.'

This graphic shows traffic from network intelligence company ThousandEyes in San Francisco being re-routed through China

WHAT IS BGP HIJACKING?

Border gateway protocol (BGP) hijacking is when attackers maliciously reroute Internet traffic. 

Attackers accomplish this by falsely announcing ownership of groups of IP addresses, called IP prefixes, that they do not actually own, control, or route to. 

A BGP hijack is much like if someone were to change out all the signs on a stretch of freeway and reroute automobile traffic onto incorrect exits. 

Because BGP is built on the assumption that interconnected networks are telling the truth about which IP addresses they own, BGP hijacking is nearly impossible to stop.

Border gateway protocol (BGP) hijacking is when attackers maliciously reroute Internet traffic. A BGP hijack is much like if someone were to change out all the signs on a stretch of freeway and reroute automobile traffic onto incorrect exits

Imagine if no one was watching the freeway signs, and the only way to tell if they had been maliciously changed was by observing that a lot of automobiles were ending up in the wrong neighbourhoods.

However, for a hijack to occur, attackers need to control or compromise a BGP-enabled router that bridges between one autonomous system (AS) and another, so not just anyone can carry out a BGP hijack. 

When an AS announces a route to IP prefixes that it does not actually control, this announcement, if not filtered, can spread and be added to routing tables in BGP routers across the Internet. 

From then until somebody notices and corrects the routes, traffic to those IPs will be routed to that AS. 

It would be like claiming territory if there were no local government to verify and enforce property deeds. 

In two recent cases, such rerouting has affected financial sites. In April 2017, one affected MasterCard and Visa among other sites. This past April, another hijacking enabled cryptocurrency theft.

Researchers also reported in October that a Chinese telecoms firms had been hijacking internet traffic on a regular basis.

Chris Demchak of the United States Naval War College and Yuval Shavitt of the Tel Aviv University in Israel traced global border gateway protocol (BGP) announcements.

They discovered several attacks by state-run China Telecom over the past few years, according to reports in Secure Reading.

They found that China redirected traffic between Canada and Korean government networks to its point of presence (PoP) in Toronto for six months in 2016. 

The Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

ThousandEyes named the companies involved in Monday's incident, in addition to China Telecom, as the Russian internet provider Transtelecom and the Nigerian ISP MainOne.

Both ThousandEyes and the U.S. network monitoring company BGPmon said the internet traffic detour originated with the Nigerian company. Neither was ready to more definitively pinpoint the cause.

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News Pictures Google is hit by 'worst ever' internet hijack

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