Pakistan YouTube Block Breaks the World

Allen54 noted a followup to yesterday's story about Pakistan's decision to block YouTube. He notes that "The telecom company that carries most of Pakistan's traffic, PCCW, has found it necessary to shut Pakistan off from the Internet while they filter out the malicious routes that a Pakistani ISP, PieNet, announced earlier today. Evidently PieNet took this step to enforce a decree from the Pakistani government that ISP's must block access to YouTube because it was a source of blasphemous content. YouTube has announced more granular routes so that at least in the US they supercede the routes announced by PieNet. The rest of the world is still struggling."

But how did they do it?

So the article isn't clear on it. Does this ISP have an AS number that allows them to upload global routes? I would say that they should lose it. I can't think of another way that a single ISP could take out the whole internet's access to something. Pretty crazy.

Re:But how did they do it?

A zealous ISP ignorantly decides the best way to comply with the decree is to re-route all of YouTube's IP addresses to whatever site they thought was more appropriate. The first repercussion was that YouTube disappeared from the Internet for almost an hour. I suspect the second repercussion was that Pakistan's Internet access crawled to a halt as all of a sudden they were handling IP requests for one of the busiest sites in the world.

So I suspect that they do have an AS number that allows them to upload global routes. I agree they should lose it though; censoring your own country is bad enough, but screwing up the rest of the world is absolutely unacceptable. I need my dancing cats!

Re:But how did they do it?

Or maybe they aren't as stupid as we think... Maybe, just maybe... They did this on purpose to give global awareness to this censorship.

Maybe I give them too much credit... But it's possible.

Re:But how did they do it?

Yeah that is very stupid. Why would you allow one of your customers to modify global routes when they don't have an AS number themselves?

I imagine that this event will introduce a lot of people to how high level internet routing works. Yes, its that vulnerable folks. Scary, but fortunately these events don't happen often. I think back in late 90s was the time when someone in Pennsylvania introduced a global route for everything to go to 0.0.0.0, which brought everything down for a day.

Re:But how did they do it?

Not to mention that they should keep ALL manner of global routing out of countries that censor the internet.. it's just a no-brainer. Probably should move a lot out of America too..

Re:But how did they do it?

The problem is that if they did that, they'd have nowhere to put it.

Unless you want to create an international organization with its own territory (sort of like the UN headquarters) that controls global routing- it can't be subject to any national law because it's got its own extraterritoriality (although international lawyers would tell me it's not true extraterritoriality, blah blah blah).

But somebody has to control THAT organization, and unless its mandate is simply to maintain the internet routing in a transparent manner between national-level routing domains...

Re:But how did they do it?

The BGP [wikipedia.org] article on Wikipedia is as good a place to start as any. Beyond that you can do some Google searches for it.

Basically BGP is the protocol used by routers to exchange route information with each other. A real oversimplification would involve three networks/routers, A, B and C. C receives it's network connectivity through A. C announces the networks it's responsible for to A, whom aggregates them before announcing them (and it's own networks) to B.

In theory, A shouldn't accept any routes from C for IP addresses not owned by C. Apparently that wasn't the case here though, or Pakistan's little stunt wouldn't have impacted anybody outside of Pakistan.

Arstechnica explains

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080225-insecure-routing-redirects-youtube-to-pakistan.html [arstechnica.com]

CBG

Worst. Title. Ever.

Re:CBG

Closely followed by the award for most incomprehensible summary. I've re-read it twice. I have no idea what is happening

Basically a Pakistani ISP decided to implement the block of Youtube by announcing a new route for the IP addresses owned by Youtube that presumably directed all of that traffic into /dev/null or elsewhere. By accident (one would presume -- there is no reason to do this on purpose) those routes were announced outside of Pakistan by said ISP, whose upstream provider then relayed them to the rest of the internet (sheer stupidity on their part -- their configuration should have prevented this). Said upstream provider then decided to cut Pakistan off until they are able to correct the problem.

All I know is living in the UK I'm in no position to criticize the Pakistanis, because their country is much freer than mine.

Yeah, I can't help but remember how Gordon Brown seized power in a military coup and allowed a leading member of the opposition to be brutally assassinated by extremists. It's amazing how far the UK has fallen, isn't it?

C'mon! As an American I can certainly sympathize with your disillusionment over your own Government's policies but get some perspective. It's not yet that bad. Freedom in the United States or United Kingdom isn't dead until people stop fighting for it and become as apathetic as you sound when you make statements like that.

Your country gave us the Common Law, the Magna Carta and the foundations of Representative Democracy. You stood alone against Hitler for all those lonely months between the Fall of France and the involvement of the Soviet Union and United States. That stand likely saved Western Democracy from Communism or Fascism. Start fighting for your freedoms instead of whining online about how much better Pakistan is. I suspect that the people fighting and dying for Democracy right now within Pakistan would have zero sympathy for your point of view.

A more technical explanation/discussion is here

There is a NANOG [merit.edu] thread about this. Apparently a more specific IP route was advertised.

"malicious" routes

I should also note that while the Slashdot story says these routes were maliciously announced, there is no evidence of this. This type of thing has happened before by accident many times. That it was accidental makes more sense anyhow - which is more probable, that there are a bunch of network wizards in Pakistan with state-of-the-art equipment decided to take out Youtube, or that a handful of overworked and undereducated network technicians in Pakistan were told by management that they had to block Youtube immediately, and in their haste their blocked route accidentally leaked to the outside world? I would say the latter, especially considering that they stopped advertising the route soon after they began getting a lot of complaints.

I should also point out that while bureaucrats in Pakistan may be bone-headed for blocking content, companies like Microsoft, Yahoo, Cisco and so forth are the ones who built things like the "Great Firewall of China". Lots of Americans like the point their finger at governments like China, whereas they could actually have more of an effect in making companies in their own countries stop building this sort of stuff.

PieNet fights back

The PieNet Funding Bill is passed. The system goes on-line August 4th, 1997. Human decisions are removed from strategic defense. PieNet begins to learn at a geometric rate. It becomes self-aware at 2:14 a.m. Eastern time, August 29th. In a panic, they try to pull the plug.

A Better Technical Explanation

Better technical explanations of the event are available from the Renesys blog [renesys.com] and Data Center Knowledge [datacenterknowledge.com]. The erroneous IP assignments spread across the net within 1 minute, 45 seconds of its announcement by Pakistan Telecom, according to a timeline by Renesys. It took about 80 minutes for YouTube to inform its providers that the route had been hijacked. YouTube says it is "investigating and working with others in the Internet community to prevent this from happening again."

Works for me

"Works for me."

/ticket closed.

First article (Third link) is not bull

The telecommunication authorities are claiming in Pakistan that YouTube was blocked for featuring allegedly blasphemous documentaries. While this move if triggered by this motive is as foolish as burning an entire library just because on a page of one of the books someone has scribbled a couple of words against you, it is far from truth. Actually Musharraf is a very self centered and insecure man these days and has recently learned from his sycophants that YouTube carries many videos critical of his government especially his torture on lawyers and political captives and since during this campaign technology played critical role in influencing people he wants to block out every kind of criticism.

This is exactly what I'm talking about.

Political, not religious reasons.

All Things Pakistan [pakistaniat.com] points out that this may have a political rather than a "cultural" reason - given that a number of videos of election rigging were posted.

Why it broke, in techie

I submitted this article yesterday while it was happening, but of course at that time details were even more sparse (speed vs. informative.. oh well). Some of the BGP routing information I captured is printed out on Wikinews [wikinews.org]. The basic idea is that Pakistan Telecon, BGP [wikipedia.org] Autonomous System [wikipedia.org] number 17557 began being chatty, saying that it owned Youtube's netblock. It did this using a /24 routing prefix [wikipedia.org], whereas Youtube exports its route as a /22 (which it should...). Because the /24 was more specific, it became the primary route of reference. This is similar to the "AS 7007" incident (Google it... there's no one good link) back in the late 1990s (one of two incidents in the history of the Internet that has brought the entire Internet down, IIRC).

I'll check back for related questions to fill in any blanks later :)

Gutenberg

Once the Islam world already did the same error. In 15th century when Gutenberg invented the printing press the Islam countries were a way ahead in science.

But mullahs forbade printing for 200 years, while in Europe it exploded. Mostly it was silly: religious stuff, cartoons, sex, but it was also maps, mathematics, etc.

Internet is about the same as an invention of printing was then. And again they are making the same mistake, again due to a fear of mullahs to lose their power.

Like 500 years ago it will just slow the development of their civilization.

Re:Cue "Islam is evil post"

Islam has various doctrines that are meant to be trials for those who subscribe to that faith. Ramadan is meant to teach patience and improve ones ability to resist temptation. If those temptations are removed by theocratic/governmental policing, the whole point is lost. Yes, a person may not have access to one area of temptation and therefore won't succumb because there's nothing to succumb to, but just like a butterfly emerging from the cocoon; if you see it struggle and decide to help it out, it won't have the ability to survive on its own later. If a muslim never even has the opportunity to face temptation because they are shielded from it at every turn, then on the likely chance that in their adult life they suddenly have multiple temptations blinding-siding them, they will have no internal facility to deal with it other than to cave in. I think the "Islam is evil" thing you're so sure is going to happen is because of how evil the intentions the governmental bodies that try to enforce it are. This is why separation church and state is so important in this respect. It was huge in christianity during the crusades. Fortunately many have seen the light and no longer impose faith as a law.

Re:Cue "Islam is evil post"

The content of the Quran, as read by the average reasonable person, resembles Mein Kampf in its degree of evil.

Godwin's law. 10 yards back, redo the whole play.

Re:What a REAL oppressive theocracy looks like

Just because other crap smells worse doesn't mean my own crap doesn't stink anymore. All oppression needs fighting, not just the blatant stuff.

Re:What a REAL oppressive theocracy looks like

Tu quoque? This idiotic line is getting old. Yes, we get it. The US is better than the scum of the Earth that is al-Qaeda and their supporters. But for the love of God, quit justifying wars of aggression and other unconstitutional acts by see, it could be worse. It's only works with mentally challenged people.

Re:What a REAL oppressive theocracy looks like

To the people here in the U.S. who consider the Bush administration an oppressive theocratic regime, pay attention. This is the sort of thing an ACTUAL oppressive theocratic regime does.

You mean the secret to appreciating my country is to simply lower my standards? Damn it, why didn't you tell me this earlier? I could've been a guilt-free patriot so long ago!

Re:What a REAL oppressive theocracy looks like

Being the second fattest chick in the bar does NOT make you skinny!