Google services were temporarily unavailable due to bgp error

Traffic from Google’s search service, G Suite and Google Cloud services, among others, was diverted on Monday through China, among others, so that the services were temporarily unavailable. The cause was probably an incorrect setting at a Nigerian provider.

A total of 212 sets of Google IP addresses, indicated by prefixes, were redirected, reports BGPMon.net, which publishes a list. As a result, various Google services were not available. It took Google almost two hours to fix the problem. Traffic from Cloudflare prefixes was also misrouted, according to BGPMon.net.

ThousandEyes, a network analysis company, concludes after an analysis that the cause was the Nigerian provider MainOne. That provider has peering connections with China Telecom and with Google. MainOne’s systems incorrectly stated that Google’s 212 IP addresses could be reached through its IP network, or AS37282, as it is known. China Telecom’s AS4809 network accepted that route, as did Russian company Transtelecom’s AS20485 network.

Not only was Google’s services temporarily out of reach, but the company’s traffic was routed through carriers in countries with a long history of Internet surveillance, ThousandEyes said. It is not known whether it is an unconsciously incorrect configuration or malicious intent; to Ars Technica, both Google and Cloudflare say they believe the mistake was made by accident.

The leak via the border gateway protocol, the routing protocol that regulates traffic between providers, follows claims about a BGP hijacking by China Telecom, which, according to reports, deliberately allowed internet traffic from, among others, Americans to flow through its networks. Oracle confirmed that the traffic was being manipulated, but it is unclear what the underlying reason is.