BGP Hijacking: How Attackers Reroute the Internet Itself

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The internet’s routing infrastructure — the system that determines how packets travel from one network to another — was not designed with security as a primary consideration. BGP (Border Gateway Protocol), the protocol that glues together the approximately 75,000 Autonomous Systems (ASes) that constitute the global internet, operates fundamentally on trust. When an AS announces that it is the best path to a given IP prefix, neighboring ASes generally believe it. This design decision, reasonable in 1989, enables a class of attacks with global impact.

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BGP Hijacking: How Attackers Reroute the Internet Itself