Fixing the Internet's routing security is urgent and requires collaboration

The Internet is fragile. Many of its protocols were designed at a time when the goal was rapid network expansion based on trust among operators. Today, the Internet's open nature is what makes it so great for business, education and communication, but the absence of security mechanisms at its core is something that criminals are eager to exploit.

In late January, traffic to many IP (Internet Protocol) addresses of the U.S. Marine Corps was temporarily diverted through an ISP in Venezuela. According to Doug Madory, director of Internet analysis at Dyn, such routing leaks occur almost on a daily basis and while many of them are accidents, some are clearly attempts to hijack Internet traffic.

Another frequent occurrence is the hijacking of dormant or unused IP address spaces. Known as IP address squatting, this technique is preferred by email spammers who need blocks of IP addresses that haven't already been blacklisted by spam filters.