BGP Hijacking

BGP hijacking occurs when an autonomous system announces IP prefixes it does not legitimately own, causing internet traffic for those prefixes to be misrouted to or through the attacker. Incidents have caused major service disruptions and enabled traffic interception. RPKI Route Origin Validation, peerlocking, and IRR-based filtering are the principal defences.

Categories: Security ControlsThreats and AttacksInternet and Routing

BGP Hijacking in context

Security controls in telecom span signaling firewalls (SS7/Diameter/GTP screening at the network edge), transport encryption (IPsec, TLS, PRINS), identity and access on OSS/BSS, and monitoring at both the packet and log level. Controls are audited against GSMA FS.11/FS.19/FS.20/FS.36 and, in Europe, NIS2 sectoral rules.

Telecom threats range from opportunistic SMS phishing and SIM swap to nation-state grade location tracking and lawful-interception abuse. The common thread is that most attacks exploit the inherited trust model of legacy signaling. SS7 and Diameter were designed for a closed operator community that no longer exists.

To place BGP Hijacking in the wider telecom-security picture, review Egress, IDS, ASN, BGP, RPKI and SCP Abuse.

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