Google services temporarily disrupted after traffic rerouted through China, Russia

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

Google services temporarily went down on Monday after the site’s traffic was routed through other networks, including some in China and Russia.

Traffic intended for Google addresses was rerouted to Russian network operator TransTelekom, China's Telecom Corp. and Nigerian provider MainOne, according to the internet research firm ThousandEyes.

“This incident at a minimum caused a massive denial of service to G Suite and Google Search," ThousandEyes Ameet Naik wrote in a post. "However, this also put valuable Google traffic in the hands of ISPs in countries with a long history of Internet surveillance."
It's unclear why traffic was rerouted through China and Russia.

A Google spokesperson told the Wall Street Journal that the company’s systems had not been compromised, noting that most of its traffic is encrypted and would face little risk if breached.

https://thehill.com/policy/technology/416516-google-traffic-briefly-route-through-russia-china

China, Russia and Nigeria are not the countries that come to mind when you think of secure internet.

[Eliot Rosewater]

1. Be prepared. IF Mueller is allowed to do his job, Putin will have EVERYTHING at risk

and will do anything to stop it.

[htuttle]

2. This doesn't make a ton of sense to me

I use Google's cloud computing platform fairly extensively, and if their search service is set up anything like their other services, or even what I can do with anything I run on their platform, it's pretty hard to describe 'the site's traffic' as 'a thing'. Compute and storage are both globally distributed, as most content is served from edge routers around the whole planet.

I dug up a better article about this on Wired, and it goes into a bit more detail. It seemed to be a BGP screwup (the protocol that controls internet routing) in Nigeria, and 'some' traffic went via China and Russia because those networks aren't protected against BGP issues. i would guess that most of the traffic that followed the rogue routes probably originated, or was destined for, Nigeria.
https://www.wired.com/story/google-internet-traffic-china-russia-rerouted/

Here's more:
https://www.commercejournal.com/cnhi_network/nigerian-isp-s-configuration-error-disrupted-google-services/article_73649d26-ceea-5bde-b9c0-af88e6e4319c.html

It doesn't look like a hack. More of a mistake mixed with an outdated protocol (BGP) and poor network infrastructure in China and Russia.

[912gdm]

3. Didn't this happen as few months ago also?

I seem to remember an issue where a great deal of traffic was rerouted though Russia

[Wintryjade]

4. Google map put me in Asia and google gave this: Telusuri Google atau ketik URL

Didn't know what was happening. I would shut down to bring computer back up to this, asking me to translate to English.

[CabalPowered]

5. The BGP wars are coming

And they're going to be ugly. These are just trial balloons.