Security News > 2021 > April > Major BGP leak disrupts thousands of networks globally
A large BGP routing leak that occurred last night disrupted the connectivity for thousands of major networks and websites around the world.
Although the BGP routing leak occurred in Vodafone's autonomous network based in India, it has impacted U.S. companies, including Google, according to sources.
Although the leak primarily impacted the misdirection of internet traffic for the 30,000+ advertised routes and Indian internet users, the leak did spread throughout the world, says Madory.
BGP route leaks are similar to BGP route hijacking, except the latter more specifically refers to instances of malicious activity taking place.
In either case of a BGP route leak or BGP hijacking, an Autonomous System announces that it knows "How" or "Where" to direct the traffic meant for certain destinations that in actuality it does not know.
Kentik shared some common safeguards with BleepingComputer that companies can use to protect against BGP leaks like this one, which says Kentik were not in place yesterday when the leak had occurred.