Time for the negotiator

A recent incident (ok 2 recent incidents) shows how scary dependence on DNS can be. Hosted VoIP solutions are particularly prone to hijacking attacks / errors.

From BGPmon.net:

This morning many BGPmon.net users received an alert regarding a possible prefix hijack by AS23724. Normally AS23724 CHINANET-IDC-BJ-AP IDC, China Telecommunications Corporation only originates about 40 prefixes, however today for about 15 minutes they originated about ~37,000 unique prefixes that are not assigned to them. This is what we typically call a prefix hijack. This incident follows another concerning incident from China 2 weeks ago.

Although it seems they have leaked a whole table, only about 10% of these prefixes propagated outside of the Chinese network. These include prefixes for popular websites such as dell.com, cnn.com, www.amazon.de, www.rapidshare.com and www.geocities.jp.

A large number of networks impacted this morning were actually Chinese networks. These include some popular Chinese website such as www.joy.cn , www.pconline.com.cn , www.huanqiu.com, www.tianya.cn and www.chinaz.com. A list of all prefixes that were announced/hijacked can be found here

Read the full article at BGPmon.net.