i asked the same question of a network phd student. i got the simple text version, and i have no idea if it is valid or not, but the guy i know is very smart.
he says in all likelihood, a guy in charge setup a malicious route or "report" saying they could access youtube faster than they really could. which means, everyone trying to get to youtube, went through pakistan because it was the fastest way to youtube. so all youtube traffic went to pakistan, which was the ddos part.
why isn't this a huge problem? it kinda is. the system shouldn't be able to be taken down. But, it isn't a huge problem because nobody actually does this.
Apparently, isps pay a lot for their access, and this kinda thing is a good way of paying a lot more and loosing all your money and not having internet, which is the opposite of the business they are in.
i've never ever heard of something like this happening, or about these 'reports.' so... maybe nobody should listen to me. but my friend is usually right about this stuff.
Many routing protocols commonly used (BGP, OSPF, etc) don't have sufficient authentication built in. They instead rely on ISPs setting up proper filters and everyone playing nice.
BGP is a protocol used to exchange routing information. Pakistan's main provider is a company called PCCW, so they are Pakistan's "upstream" provider.
Each BGP peer announces which set of routes they are the final destination for, e.g. Level3 announces themselves as the final dest for my Class C, 206.192.23.0/24 .
In blocking YouTube, they either meant to be malicious, or, they meant to null-route YouTube inside Pakistan but instead fat-fingered it and issued commands that instead of null-routing, made them the final destination for those YouTube IPs.
Mistake that YouTube made was that this Class C was also where their DNS servers were, so they were unable to redirect people elsewhere once they were aware what was going on (since corrected).
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Can someone more knowledgeable about the internets than me please explain how someone can just hijack YouTube's IP address?
i asked the same question of a network phd student. i got the simple text version, and i have no idea if it is valid or not, but the guy i know is very smart.
he says in all likelihood, a guy in charge setup a malicious route or "report" saying they could access youtube faster than they really could. which means, everyone trying to get to youtube, went through pakistan because it was the fastest way to youtube. so all youtube traffic went to pakistan, which was the ddos part.
why isn't this a huge problem? it kinda is. the system shouldn't be able to be taken down. But, it isn't a huge problem because nobody actually does this.
Apparently, isps pay a lot for their access, and this kinda thing is a good way of paying a lot more and loosing all your money and not having internet, which is the opposite of the business they are in.
i've never ever heard of something like this happening, or about these 'reports.' so... maybe nobody should listen to me. but my friend is usually right about this stuff.
It is a problem if a hacker does this to an ISP in order to push his political / religious / whatever agenda.
Many routing protocols commonly used (BGP, OSPF, etc) don't have sufficient authentication built in. They instead rely on ISPs setting up proper filters and everyone playing nice.
Cool. Can you show me how to redirect Yahoo's traffic to my blog?
Ah. I see that you didn't quite grasp the consequences of Pakistan's mistake, and wish to repeat it for your own self.
I can see you don't grasp the concept of humor.
BGP is a protocol used to exchange routing information. Pakistan's main provider is a company called PCCW, so they are Pakistan's "upstream" provider.
Each BGP peer announces which set of routes they are the final destination for, e.g. Level3 announces themselves as the final dest for my Class C, 206.192.23.0/24 .
In blocking YouTube, they either meant to be malicious, or, they meant to null-route YouTube inside Pakistan but instead fat-fingered it and issued commands that instead of null-routing, made them the final destination for those YouTube IPs.
Mistake that YouTube made was that this Class C was also where their DNS servers were, so they were unable to redirect people elsewhere once they were aware what was going on (since corrected).
Also see http://www.renesys.com/blog/2008/02/pakistan_hijacks_youtube...
Interesting. Thanks.