Stealing The Internet - A Routed, Wide-area, Man in the Middle Attack

Presented at DEF CON 16 (2008), Unknown date/time (Unknown duration)

In this presentation we're going to show Defcon how broken the Internet is, how helpless its users are without provider intervention, and how much apathy there is towards routing security. With the method described in this talk, an attacker is able to gain full control and visibility of all IP packets heading towards an arbitrary destination prefix on the Internet. From the perspective of the victims network, every inbound packet they receive will have first taken the 'scenic route' through the attackers network before getting reaching the true destination. The presentation will show attendees how (roughly) BGP works on the Internet, how and what providers do (or don't do) when interconnecting their networks, concluding with a discussion of the hijacking method and a live demo of 'man in the middled' traffic, in-flight, to an undisclosed destination, including countermeasures employed to further obscure the interception and ensure nearly perfect network transparency. Ettercap and others please stand aside - routed Internet hijacking has come of age!

Presenters:

  • Alex Pilosov - Security Researcher
    Tkap (xam) & Pilo have presented at Defcon in the past but never before with this much spit & vinegar. Tkap usually talks about layer-1 and 2 stuff, like microwaves and data transport technologies. Pilo usually talks about optical transport systems and other layer-1 technologies, but he likes routing security too!
  • Anton Kapela - Security Researcher
    Tkap (xam) & Pilo have presented at Defcon in the past but never before with this much spit & vinegar. Tkap usually talks about layer-1 and 2 stuff, like microwaves and data transport technologies. Pilo usually talks about optical transport systems and other layer-1 technologies, but he likes routing security too!

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