China systematically hijacks internet traffic

[Hydrogen]

Researchers have mapped out a series of internet traffic hijacks and redirections that they say are part of large espionage and intellectual property theft effort by China.

The researchers, Chris Demchak of the United States Naval War College and Yuval Shavitt of the Tel Aviv University in Israel, say in their paper that state-owned China Telecom hijacked and diverted internet traffic going to or passing through the US and Canada to China on a regular basis.

Tel Aviv University researchers built a route tracing system that monitors BGP announcements  and which picks up on patterns suggesting accidental or deliberate hijacks and discovered multiple attacks by China Telecom over the past few years.

In 2016, China Telecom diverted traffic between Canada and Korean government networks to its PoP in Toronto. From there, traffic was forwarded to the China Telecom PoP on the US West Coast and sent to China, and finally delivered to Korea.

Normally, the traffic would take a shorter route, going between Canada, the US and directly to Korea. The traffic hijack lasted for six months, suggesting it was a deliberate attack, Demchak and Shavitt said.

Demchak and Shavitt detailed other traffic hijacks, including one that saw traffic from US locations to a large Anglo-American bank's Milan headquarters being terminated in China, and never delivered to Italy, in 2016.

During 2017, traffic between Scandinavia and Japan, transiting the United States, was also captured by China Telecom, ditto data headed to a mail server operated by a large Thai financial company.

China Telecom is able to divert the traffic by announcing bogus routes via the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) that governs data flows between Autonomous Systems, the large networks operated by telcos, internet providers and corporations.

After the traffic was copied by China Telecom for encyption breaking and analysis, it was delivered to the intended networks with only small delays. Demchak and Shavitt said.

Such hijacking is difficult to detect as China Telecom has multiple points of presence (PoPs) in North America and Europe that are physically close to the attacked networks, causing almost unnoticeable traffic delivery delays despite the lengthened routes.

China in comparison does not allow overseas telcos to establish PoPs in the country, and has only three gateways into the country, in Beijing, Shanghai and Hong Kong. This isolation protects the country's domestic and transit traffic from foreign hijacking.

BGP hijacking of internet traffic is a common phenomenon, one which requires the support of large network operators to exploit at scale.

While the US and China agreed in 2015 to not hack one another's computer networks, the deal did not cover hijacking of internet backbones, Demchak and Shavitt pointed out.

The researchers suggest the allied democratic nations establish an "access reciprocity" policy for internet PoPs located in their countries, to address the traffic hijacking.

Under the access reciprocity policy US telcos and providers should be allowed to set up PoPs in China, Demchak and Shavitt said.

If access reciprocity is refused, "then an appropriate defence policy in response could state that no traffic to or from the US or ally is allowed to enter a China Telecom PoP in the US or in the ally's networks," the researchers suggested.

Such a policy could be inserted into BGP routing tables as required for automatic implementation.

https://www.itnews.com.au/news/china-systematically-hijacks-internet-traffic-researchers-514537

....

This sounds ridiculous.

If russia rerouted american internet traffic to steal state secrets or intellectual property, CNN, MSNBC and other news outlets would be calling for immediate action. They would push military action or some type of severe penalty beyond already imposed economic sanctions. China gets a free pass--for whatever reason. China would appear to be the deep state "goldenboy" who receives a lot of special treatment for reasons that are unknown, unverified and maybe a little mysterious.

Events like this could help explain why many americans support raising tariffs on chinese goods.

On the technical side, I would be interested to know how common these types of man-in-the-middle(?) attacks are. The article seems to imply that having geographic POP helps execute this form of internet sniffing. AFAIK having POP isn't 100% necessary for it & there are many conditions where it may even be unnecessary considering how many platforms are compromised & already have backdoors built in to them.

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[dothebeats]

For a nation who seems to want utter control on every front of the world, it's not surprising for the Chinese to do such things like this. I don't support the actions of the Chinese at all and it makes me think that they have been doing this for a long time now. Heck, they have been doing it with chips, how about internet traffic which is far more easier to access? The Chinese are slowly getting aggressive every single day and it's already alarming.

[davis196]

China owns a big chunk of the US government debt,maybe that's why they get a free pass...
But hey,Russia is the "big enemy",according to the leftist liberal mainstream media in the US.
The Chinese growth is build upon cheap labor and stolen intelectual property.They are an unstoppable force.

[gostop]

For a nation who seems to want utter control on every front of the world, it's not surprising for the Chinese to do such things like this. I don't support the actions of the Chinese at all and it makes me think that they have been doing this for a long time now. Heck, they have been doing it with chips, how about internet traffic which is far more easier to access? The Chinese are slowly getting aggressive every single day and it's already alarming.

I don't know which country you are a friend of, I think you are confused by the Chinese threat theory. I go to China and I think they are more futuristic than the United States. This is irreversible. In the future, China will become the first, but you don't have to Worried about this famous family, this is a peace-loving clan, and the people there are very friendly to me.

[chairmanMao]

I probably know a little. First you are a US, then you are a supporter of Trump. Finally you are an American white. Your concerns about China are the same as those of black people. You are a self-righteous guy.

[fortresscoin]

According to Wikipedia, “ Internet censorship in China is among the most stringent in the world”.  We’ve all heard about the Google vs. China fights for years now.  Just because China is guilty of massive censorship, doesn’t mean that they are hijacking information, but I would be suspicious.  After all they were calling incidents of re-routing of highly sensitive US Department of Defense information including email addresses a ‘mistake’ back in 2010, so this is nothing new (see telegraph.co.uk Nov. 2010).  Common sense says that world power operating as a unitary one-party socialist republic just might be hijacking something.

[Kevin77]

I guess it is definitely bad no matter what but doesn't it also important where that traffic comes from.

I can see the traffic was suppose to go to places like Toronto and Korea and so forth but in the end it was china where it lead however if it came from china and was aiming at outside but was bounded back to china that it makes sense, china is a high censored country with all the internet being under control of the party and if it means china trying to keep Chinese in Chinese internet than it would make sense.

It is still not alright to drive traffic back into country when they want to check other countries but trying to redirect a traffic from USA to Toronto into USA to China would mean much worse than a traffic driven from China back to China if you ask me, they are doing it themselves is still understandable.

[olubams]

The same treatment cannot be applicable to everyone accused of certain actions because they all occupies different importance. The antagonism between the US and Russia has actually given the Chinese the opportunity for them to spread their influence to a position that becomes difficult to curtail and its strategic that today, you don't just wake up and sanction the Chinese without thinking of the effect its going to have on your own economy and that is there would be slow actions or non-action in this case.

[upsidedown75]

For a nation who seems to want utter control on every front of the world, it's not surprising for the Chinese to do such things like this. I don't support the actions of the Chinese at all and it makes me think that they have been doing this for a long time now. Heck, they have been doing it with chips, how about internet traffic which is far more easier to access? The Chinese are slowly getting aggressive every single day and it's already alarming.

I don't know which country you are a friend of, I think you are confused by the Chinese threat theory. I go to China and I think they are more futuristic than the United States. This is irreversible. In the future, China will become the first, but you don't have to Worried about this famous family, this is a peace-loving clan, and the people there are very friendly to me.

The people there being friendly does not change the fact that China is a controlled freak region. This to me is going too far though, considering what Hydrogen said that if this was another country, we would have seen US actually pulling all walls down to deal with them, but China, they just keep getting that free pass.

I would imagine this will have to do with the US debts anyway, but all the same, it is really absurd to see China in the news every time for things like this. I have no doubt that this is a good region when it comes to doing business, but that does not change what is going on within the system of governance.

[LeGaulois]

...

Because The US government needs China but not vice versa. Didn't they have a debt with China? And not just a few millions here and there

When Russia rerouted American traffic the news outlets screamed well, we were stuffed with it well, don't worry.
Such attacks are surely more frequent with the geo-politic problems and China isn't the first one. I think these methods come mainly from countries with a censorship tendency

[1Referee]

I would imagine this will have to do with the US debts anyway, but all the same, it is really absurd to see China in the news every time for things like this.

It has been known that they are pulling off these dirty tricks and cheats for a long time now, but what people overlook is how there are way more countries doing the exact same thing. It's easy for us to hammer down on China, while in reality every country has the incentive to do the same for their own benefit. The only difference is that we don't hear/read about it; silence in that field doesn't mean it's not happening.

In the end, all this public political nonsense is a mud throwing battle between the most corrupted economies in the world, all trying to make the opposite side look as bad as possible. The US isn't any better than China and Russia. They are all out to nurse their hunger for power and economical progress.

[believe in BTC]

According to Wikipedia, “ Internet censorship in China is among the most stringent in the world”.  We’ve all heard about the Google vs. China fights for years now.  Just because China is guilty of massive censorship, doesn’t mean that they are hijacking information, but I would be suspicious.  After all they were calling incidents of re-routing of highly sensitive US Department of Defense information including email addresses a ‘mistake’ back in 2010, so this is nothing new (see telegraph.co.uk Nov. 2010).  Common sense says that world power operating as a unitary one-party socialist republic just might be hijacking something.

Looking at the history of China and the way they have always done things, I would be suspicious as well, but we cannot just assume things in our head just to think that China is being given some preferential treatment as the OP mentioned it. However things are going to get to pan out eventually, we will get to see, but no one is righteous at the moment, with US even being the number one culprit of not being righteous at all. We would not know how this story is even true in the first place, but we all know China wants to be in control, probably the US government feel threatened with that based on the fact that they own most of US government debt.