China Telecom Hijacks US, Canadian Internet Traffic On a Regular Basis, Report Says

Bismillah writes: China Telecom is up to no good with Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) shenanigans researchers have discovered. The state-owned telco is hijacking and rerouting internet traffic to China via it's U.S. and Canadian points of presence (PoPs). As for how the researchers came to their conclusion, they reportedly 'built a route tracing system that monitors BGP announcements and which picks up on patterns suggesting accidental or deliberate hijacks and discovered multiple attacks by China Telecom over the past few years,' reports iTNews.

In one example occurring in 2016, 'China Telecom diverted traffic between Canada and Korean government networks to its PoP in Toronto,' the report says. 'From there, traffic was forwarded to the China Telecom PoP on the U.S. West Coast and sent to China, and finally delivered to Korea. Normally, the traffic would take a shorter route, going between Canada, the U.S. and directly to Korea.' The telecommunications company is able to reroute the traffic by announcing fake routes via the BGP, which 'governs data flow between Autonomous Systems, the large networks operated by telcos, internet providers and corporations.'

Read more of this story at Slashdot.