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IT engineers are studying what may be an easier way to fix along-existing weakness in the Internet's routing system that hasthe potential to cause major service outages and allow hackers tospy on data. The problem involves the routers used by every organization andcompany that owns a block of IP addresses. Those routerscommunicate constantly with other routers, updating their internalinformation -- often upwards of 400,000 entries -- on the best wayto reach other networks using a protocol called Border GatewayProtocol (BGP). BGP enables routers to find the best path when, say, a network usedto retrieve a web page from South Korea is not working properly.Changes in that routing information are distributed quickly torouters around the world in as few as five minutes. But the routers do not verify that the route "announcements," asthey are called, are correct. Mistakes in entering the information-- or worse yet, a malicious attack -- can cause a network tobecome unavailable. It can also cause, for example, a company's Internet traffic to becircuitously routed through another network it does not need to gothrough, opening the possibility the traffic could be intercepted.The attack is known as "route hijacking," and can't be stopped byany security product. When routing problems erupt, "it's very difficult to tell if thisis fat fingering on a router or malicious," said Joe Gersch, chiefoperating officer for Secure64, a company that makes Domain NameSystem (DNS) server software. "It could be a trial run forcyberwarfare." Data shows that as much as one-third of the world can't reachportions of the Internet at a time due to routing problems, Gerschsaid. In February, a routing mistake caused the international traffic forAustralian operator Telstra to go through its competitor's network,Dodo, which couldn't handle the traffic surge. In a well-knownincident, Pakistan Telecom made an error with BGP after Pakistan'sgovernment ordered in 2008 that ISPs block YouTube, which ended upknocking Google's service offline. In March 2011, a researcher noticed that traffic destined for Facebook on AT&T's network strangelywent through China for a while. While the requests would normallygo directly to Facebook's network provider, the traffic first wentthrough China Telecom and then to SK Broadband in South Koreabefore routing to Facebook. Although the incident was characterizedas a mistake, it would have been possible for unencrypted Facebooktraffic to have been spied on. "The broader problem here is that much of this criticalinfrastructure simply relies on players behaving correctly," saidDan Massey, an associate computer science professor at ColoradoState University. "In a truly global system like the internet, youmust assume that organizations will occasionally make unintentionalmistakes." But "imagine what a determined adversary might be able to do,"Massey said. That could include attacks on critical infrastructure,such as power plants, which have become increasingly reliant on theInternet. The solution is to have routers verify that the IP address blocksannounced by others routers actually belong to their networks. Onemethod, Resource Public Key Infrastructure (RPKI), uses a system of cryptographic certificates that verify anIP address block indeed belongs to a certain network. RPKI is complex, and deployment has been slow. Experts recentlycame up with an alternate system, nicknamed ROVER for Route Origin Verification, that may be easier. ROVER stores the legitimate route information within the DNS, theenormous distributed database that translates a domain name into anIP address that can be called into a browser. That routeinformation can be signed with DNSSEC, the security protocol thatallows DNS records to be cryptographically signed, which is beingwidely adopted. The advantages with ROVER are that no changes need to be made toexisting routers, and it can work alongside RPKI. "The wholeinfrastructure of securing the answer [of whether the route islegitimate] already exists," said Gersch, who has authored twospecifications for how to name a route and the type of record thatcould be inserted into the DNS. The specifications are currently in "internet daft" status beforethe Internet Engineering Task Force. The next step to becoming astandard is for a working group to adopt the documents, Gerschsaid. Send news tips and comments to jeremy_kirk@idg.com. We are high quality suppliers, our products such as Nissan Condenser Manufacturer , Volkswagen Evaporator for oversee buyer. To know more, please visits Auto Air Conditioner Condenser.
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