Border Gateway Protocol or BGP, for short, help chart the route for data packets so that packets can be delivered using as few nodes as possible. The nodes here refer to autonomous networks which all come together to create a vast Internet.
What is the Border Gateway Protocol
When I was in school, our class visited a post office to see how it works. The postmaster told us that he sorted the mail by destination and put it in the corresponding bags. Sometimes a direct route is not possible, therefore mail is routed to a post office near the destination and this post office allows delivery of mail by sending it by address.
Border Gateway Protocol represents a post office. You could say it’s the Internet post office. The data packets that we generate while working on the Internet must be routed through different autonomous networks so that they can reach the destination IP address. An Internet is actually a lot of networks that look like a huge network. The Internet is therefore a network of autonomous networks. These autonomous networks are provided by ISPs, governments and technology organizations, etc.
Is BGP safe? How can BGP be hijacked?
These autonomous networks are set up by different entities and decide which Internet nodes to use so that the data packets reach their destination without getting lost. But sometimes there are rogue nodes on the way that hijack the data route by poisoning one or more real nodes on the Internet.
What happens is that when a data packet has to be moved from A to B to C to D, where D is the destination, the data packet is sent to A. This node contacts the next node, B , so that it can be transferred to its destination. If a hijacker creates a fake Node B and poisons the real B, the data packet will move from A to the fake Node B. This malicious node will now redirect the data packets to a malicious website of similar appearance .
In other words, the Border Gateway Protocol is no more secure when used only by itself. There is a method according to Cloudflare that makes using the Internet safer without being prey to hijackers.
Resource Public Key Infrastructure (RPKI)
Resource public key infrastructure or RPKI is a service that protects data packets from hacking on BGP networks. This technique uses cryptography when finding the route to follow for data packets. Thus, the use of RPKI over Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) helps to secure data and prevents the hijacking of nodes used in an Internet route.
To see if your ISP is using Border Gateway Protocol correctly, visit IsBGPsafeyet.com and click Test your ISP on the page.
To summarize:
- BGP is a protocol that creates a route for data packets to reach their destination
- BGP is not very safe if implemented alone
- RPKI uses cryptography, which helps prevent malicious nodes when used in combination with the Border Security Protocol (BGP).