IP hijacking

BGP hijacking (sometimes referred to as prefix hijacking, route hijacking or IP hijacking) is the illegitimate takeover of groups of IP addresses by corrupting Internet routing tables maintained using the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP). BGP hijacking (sometimes referred to as prefix hijacking, route hijacking or IP hijacking) is the illegitimate takeover of groups of IP addresses by corrupting Internet routing tables maintained using the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP). The Internet is a global network in enabling any connected host, identified by its unique IP address, to talk to any other, anywhere in the world. This is achieved by passing data from one router to another, repeatedly moving each packet closer to its destination, until it is hopefully delivered. To do this, each router must be regularly supplied with up-to-date routing tables. At the global level, individual IP addresses are grouped together into prefixes. These prefixes will be originated, or owned, by an autonomous system (AS) and the routing tables between ASes are maintained using the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP).