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Is BGP safe yet?

isbgpsafeyet.com

31–40 of 98 posts

Re: Is BGP safe yet?

#31

> A BGP hijack occurs when a malicious node deceives another node, lying about what the routes are for its neighbors. Without any security protocols, this misinformation can propagate from node to node, until a large number of nodes now know about, and attempt to use these incorrect, nonexistent, or malicious routes. But with HTTPS, they wouldn't be able to actually pose as another website, just delay/black hole the…

You can use BGP hijacks to spoof another website.

You just need to get a publicly trusted CA to mint a certificate for your new site.

This can be done, for example, with let’s encrypt, using several of the various domain verification challenges they support.

There are some protections against this, such as CAA records in DNS, which restrict which CAs can issue certs and depending on the CA which verification methods are allowed. That may not provide adequate protection.

For example if you are using LE and are using verification mechanisms other than DNS then the attacker could trick LE to issuing it a cert.

That also depends on the security of DNS, which can be tricky.

So, yes, BGP hijacks can be used to impersonate other sites, even though they are using HTTPS.

When you configure your domains, Make sure you setup CAA, locked down to your specific CA, and have DNS sec setup, as a minimum bar. Also avoid using DV mechanisms that only rely on control over an IP address, as that can be subverted via BGP.

Re: Is BGP safe yet?

#32

> A BGP hijack occurs when a malicious node deceives another node, lying about what the routes are for its neighbors. Without any security protocols, this misinformation can propagate from node to node, until a large number of nodes now know about, and attempt to use these incorrect, nonexistent, or malicious routes. But with HTTPS, they wouldn't be able to actually pose as another website, just delay/black hole the…

Well if they can deceive certificate authorities that implement the ACME protocol like LetsEncrypt, then they could get a certificate for your site with the HTTP-01 challenge, see the paper Using BGP to Acquire Bogus TLS Certificates (2017) [1]. That paper suggested a mitigation they call Multiple Vantage Point Verification , which has already been implemented [2]. [1]: https://petsymposium.org/2017/papers/hotpets/bg…

They don't need ACME to do that, ACME is just an automation standard - the same rules apply for getting a certificate via ACME such as 3.2.2.4.19 "Agreed upon change to website - ACME" as for the manual process 3.2.2.4.18 "Agreed upon change to website v2". The ACME version is just designed for machines to automate easily (and as a result wildly more common in use today)

And Multi-perspective only helps against an attacker who is merely able to influence a local route, if they can ensure all your perspectives see the same thing the attacker wins.

Re: Is BGP safe yet?

#33
post #2

This actually shows pretty good coverage for this feature, it seems to me. The big American isps do it, the mobile ones do too... How many major isps would we want to implement it to be "safe" and what would that look like? Is this a regional thing? They've only listed 4 unsafe ones on the site and that doesn't seem like a major issue, but maybe they're very large somewhere.

I got a fail on T-Mobile USA. It seems in the full list that T-Mobile is listed as both passing and failing.

Re: Is BGP safe yet?

#34
post #2

This actually shows pretty good coverage for this feature, it seems to me. The big American isps do it, the mobile ones do too... How many major isps would we want to implement it to be "safe" and what would that look like? Is this a regional thing? They've only listed 4 unsafe ones on the site and that doesn't seem like a major issue, but maybe they're very large somewhere.

Click show all. Major ISPs like British Telecom (core UK telephony), NTT Docomo (Japan), Vodafone Espana (showing that Vodafone isn't doing it globally), Starlink (showing it's not a old tech problem), Rogers (US ISP) are listed unsafe. I think the 31 is a misleadingly positive picture.

I thought Rogers was Canadian.

Re: Is BGP safe yet?

#35
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why hasn't this happened?

Because SCION is mostly said as a joke in the more serious carrier world. SCION is practically speaking proprietary, and has 1 and maybe a half implementations. I have a laundry list of real problems with SCION but SCION feels like one of those entities that would get quite legal-ey if discussed publicly.

[flagged]

Re: Is BGP safe yet?

#36
rpki adoption is the new ipv6 adoption. it looks great until you realize it only validates who owns the prefix, not the path to get there lol

Re: Is BGP safe yet?

#37
post #2

This actually shows pretty good coverage for this feature, it seems to me. The big American isps do it, the mobile ones do too... How many major isps would we want to implement it to be "safe" and what would that look like? Is this a regional thing? They've only listed 4 unsafe ones on the site and that doesn't seem like a major issue, but maybe they're very large somewhere.

I got a fail on T-Mobile USA. It seems in the full list that T-Mobile is listed as both passing and failing.

T-Mobile consists of at least five distinct networks depending on when your carrier was purchased, last time I was talking with some of the network security guys in Factoria. It’s been four years - they may have converged some of them.

Re: Is BGP safe yet?

#38
post #20

I think the test for BGP is Safe is when we stop using it and instead use SCION: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCION_(Internet_architecture) .

SCION is generally considered snake oil within the network operator community. Its weird single vendor for profit company that ships it's software, the fact that no router hw asic fwding supports what they want to do and then the general scummy inclusion of block chain / crypto as well as some "green washing" for PR hype. Sure the swiss have their toy but no one is taking it seriously.

Hmm, I'd disagree. The fact that Anapaya Systems (the for profit company mentioned) has the only commercial implementation/adjacent software is a problem, yes. But "snake oil" doesn't quite match up with the fact that SCION right now provides the backbone for the Swiss financial network moving 200 billion CHF each day [1], so at least some level of workable technology has to be there. And for no one to be taking it seriously, there's a decently long list of multinational ISPs at the very least taking steps towards offering SCION to customers [2] (e.g. British Telecom has expressed enough interest that they have various recent marketing videos on Anapaya's YouTube channel). Finally, I'm not sure what you mean regarding the "scummy inclusion of block chain / crypto" - as someone who has worked on SCION-based projects I never heard anything about this. Apparently a blockchain company invested in Anapaya, but that doesn't really change anything about the protocol itself, does it?

[1] https://www.scion.org/ssfn-scion/ [2] https://www.scion.org/isps/

Re: Is BGP safe yet?

#39

RPKI doesn't make BGP safe, it makes it safer . BGP hijacks can still happen. RPKI only secures the ownership information of a given prefix, not the path to that prefix. Under RPKI, an attacker can still claim to be on the path to a victim AS, and get the victim's traffic sent to it. The solution to this was supposed to be BGPSec, but it's widely seen as un-deployable.

> and get the victim's traffic sent to it

This sounds "obviously bad" but the intricacies of routing aren't really my field, could you expand on why this is bad? (i.e. what specific bad things does it enable)

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