RE: YouTube outage underscores big Internet problem

This is just another fine example of computer based systems being utterly dependent on human interaction... better known as garbage in, garbage out.

Still, the Internet should remain utilitarian with no single governing legal authority. Human error shall always have its impact.

Oh, and thanks for letting all the script babies out there know how to exploit an exploit. What a slow news day to make this piece 'newsworthy'.

Glenn Rogers

Internet routers have burdens if they run full routing tables. They may not have the time to filter incoming BGP traffic due to the burden they already have. And providers don't want to pay to upgrade to bigger routers.

This level of the Internet works on the KISS principle. It works because it is at a simple level, and the rules don't take many cycles to implement, unlike what it would take to code Asimov's three laws of robotics.

What folks are missing is that Pakistan is to blame. It was their responsibility to block outbound BGP announcement of that custom black-hole route. What we need is economic sanctions of some reasonable measure on the ISP to properly encourage good citizenship of the Internet.

Each packet is already being inspected by the router (on some level)- this is a necessary requirement: to be routed, compared to access lists etc. It is not a valid argument to claim that the router is too slow, or all packets can't be looked at.
Most Major ISP's only peer with responsible companies who sign agreements to prevent this type of thing. (Someone has broken the rules of their security contract.) All moderm ISP's should have rules in place on BGP that will prevent the two problems discussed here. First a BGP update should be filtered to only come from a Specific IP address (the router at the other end of the line). Second the Pakistan ISP's routes received by the Hong Kong ISP should have been filterd. Hong Kong should only allow the Pakistan ISP to "advertise" routes that were in their network, not those of routes outside their network.

Simple, Known, best commmon practices would have prevented this from happening.
I agree the Pakistan ISP is originally to blame, but the Hong Kong ISP is just as culpable, I assume they are the "legitimate" ISP that other ISP's accepted this route update from.

This reeks of a targeted attack dressed up to look like a careless human mistake. Not pointing fingers here as this is my humble opinion but it would be exceedingly simple for those with the knowledge to set this up and make it look like a mistake. I would follow the trail of who/where/what made this change. That way you would see just why this happened.

They must have tried to send the traffic to Black Hole (A terminology used to send the spam traffic or DOS traffic to blackhole so that it does not affect the service) But I guess the legitimate network addresses were unfortunately also became the target while Pakistan tried to block youtube traffic.

Religious idiots and political whackos will always be willing to destroy anything that does not fit thier idiotic views...Good luck, world!

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