Computer Hope
Other => Computer News => Topic started by: Deerpark on February 25, 2008, 09:02:14 AM
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From ArsTechnica.com
On Sunday, YouTube became unreachable from most, if not all, of the Internet. No "sorry we're down" or cutesy kitten-with-screwdriver page, nothing. What happened was that packets sent to YouTube were flowing to Pakistan. Which was curious, because the Pakistan government had just instituted a ban on the popular video sharing site. What apparently happened is that Pakistan Telecom routed the address block that YouTube's servers are in to a "black hole" as a simple measure to filter access to the service. However, this routing information escaped from Pakistan Telecom to its ISP PCCW in Hong Kong, which propagated the route to the rest of the world. So any packets for YouTube would end up in Pakistan Telecom's black hole instead.
On the North American Network Operators Group (NANOG) mailing list, where many engineers in charge of Internet routing hang out, the consensus is that this was an accident. Only one or two people suggest that it may be a malicious act, possibly a trial of something bigger. So why was this incident so devastating to YouTube's reachability?
The complete article (http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080225-insecure-routing-redirects-youtube-to-pakistan.html)
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Knowing some things about router configurations and setup. I could see how something like this could be mistakenly done, highly doubt it was malicious.
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Yeah I don't think it was anything more than a mistake either. But this really shows how incredibly vulnerable the infrastructure of the internet is when a mistake by one ISP can propagate to the rest of the world.
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You're absolutely right. With a simple configuration line error, the potential of internet cables getting cut, computers or other network hardware failing. It's amazing the Internet is even working. ;)