An In Depth Discussion of BGP Hijacking Attacks and How Systems Detect and Mitigate Such Attacks

Abstract

While internet architecture and software have made drastic developments since the birth of the internet, the internet is still an unsecure place where attacks are common. Despite the security of the internet, hundreds of BGP hijacking attacks occur each year. In 2021 alone, there were 775 possible instances of BGP hijacking attacks. These attacks redirect information to an alternative network where it could be compromised to misused, but they are also a major inconvenience for the user as connection to a particular website could be completely dropped (known as blackholing). The purpose of this review is to synthesize and link two discrete topics, being cybersecurity and network architecture, and how those topics work together. To find evidence for this review, databases such as Google Scholar and IEEE Xplore were queried. Additional information on how evidence was gathered, how quality of information was ensured, and strategies used to synthesize information is discussed in the Methods section. This review provides an in-depth discussion on BGP hijacking attacks, the different types of BGP hijacking attacks, how the BGP protocol (and other routing protocols ) function, the structure of a BGP message, how systems detect and mitigate BGP hijacking attacks, and a summary of internet architecture and how devices on the internet communicate.