The internet is often described as a series of tubes, but at its core, it is a complex web of trust known as the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP). Recently, Venezuela suffered a significant connectivity outage, and Cloudflare’s deep dive reveals the culprit was a classic BGP route leak.
In this specific incident, a local ISP inadvertently propagated a longer, more specific route prefix to an upstream provider. This usually triggers a BGP best-path selection algorithm that favors the specific route over the global aggregate. Consequently, traffic intended for Venezuelan networks was misrouted, causing a blackout as data packets hit dead ends or incorrect paths.
What makes this anomaly fascinating is that it wasn’t malicious; it highlights the fragile, manual nature of internet routing security. Despite improvements like RPKI (Resource Public Key Infrastructure), human error and filter misconfigurations remain the Achilles’ heel of global connectivity. This event serves as a stark reminder of how a single configuration error in one corner of the globe can ripple outward, effectively partitioning the internet for millions.
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