After 30 years, this 'massively distributed system that relies on the propagation of rumours' seems unfixable, says APNIC's chief scientist, but digital signatures are starting to help.

September 13, 2019 By Stilgherrian



Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) is the system used to route traffic around the internet, and it's terrible -- despite decades of global efforts to improve its security.



According to Geoff Huston, chief scientist with the Asia Pacific Network Information Centre (APNIC), BGP is a "screaming car wreck" with "phenomenal insecurity".



"I actually don't think it's a fixable car wreck," Huston told the organisation's twice-yearly conference in Chiang Mai, Thailand on Tuesday.



"BGP is a protocol that dates back to the Bellman-Ford algorithm of 1963. It's older than the moonshot. It's getting on to 60 years," he said.



BGP has certainly been at the core of some serious incidents over the decades.



Back in 2008, Pakistan was attempting to censor videos on the internet when it accidentally knocked YouTube offline globally. Something similar happened in 2014 when Indian telco Bharti Airtel took down Google services.



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