China Telecom re-routes 15% of the world's Internet traffic for a full 18 minutes, hopes no one noticed
On April 8 of this year there was an approximately eighteen minute long period of time where China Telecom advertised erroneous network traffic routes, causing foreign Internet traffic to travel through Chinese servers. According to a congressional panel, about fifteen percent of the world's Internet traffic was diverted -- including that of the US government and military, and a number of commercial websites. As always seems to be the case when we're talking about The People's Republic, there are few things that can be said for certain, while a ton of questions linger: was this really just a mistake, or was someone flexing their muscles? Could this have been a diversion "intended to conceal one targeted attack," as Arbor Networks Chief Security Officer Danny McPherson suggested? We don't know, but this is the country that brought us both iorgane and buses that drive over cars, so we suppose anything's possible.
