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 span signaling firewalls (SS7/Diameter/GTP screening), transport encryption (IPsec, TLS, PRINS), identity and access on OSS/BSS, and monitoring at both packet and log level. Controls are audited against GSMA FS.11/FS.19/FS.20/FS.36.

Telecom threats range from opportunistic SMS phishing and SIM swap to nation-state grade location tracking. The common thread is that most attacks exploit the inherited trust model of legacy signaling protocols.

To place BGP Hijacking in the wider telecom-security picture, review Egress, IDS, ASN, BGP, RPKI and SCP Abuse: each entry cross-references back to this page so you can walk the topic in either direction.

Related terms

Related topic hubs

More from the TelcoSec Glossary

Browse the full TelcoSec Glossary, the Ultimate Guide to Mobile Network Security, or the P1 Arsenal of telecom-security tools.