Google outage pushed traffic through Russia, China and Nigeria

Google's services went down for an hour yesterday after its IP addresses were routed way from normal paths to Nigeria, China and Russia. Service interruptions ended about 5:30 p.m. EST.

The incident was first detected and reported by BGPmon, an online service that monitors the routes that internet traffic takes through the smaller internet service provider (ISP) networks that make up the larger internet.

The specific method employed, formally known as border gateway protocol hijacking, can knock essential services offline and facilitate espionage and financial theft. Most network traffic to Google services -94 percent as of October 27 - is encrypted, which shields it from prying eyes even if diverted.

Google is downplaying Monday's incident, saying it does not believe it was malicious, but has failed to allay fears that the personal data of millions of users may have been compromised.

Failures such as the one Google experienced on Monday can occur because of a technical error—when a network engineer misconfigures systems, for example—or they could also represent a malicious attempt to intercept data, network experts say.

Read more -here-

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