China and Russia suspected of hijacking Google internet traffic in ‘war game experiment’

An internet traffic diversion that sent data through Russia and China disrupted Google services on Monday, including search and cloud-hosting services and its bundle of collaboration tools for businesses.

Service interruptions lasted for nearly two hours and ended about 5.30pm New York time, network service companies said. In addition to Russian and Chinese telecommunications companies, a Nigerian internet provider was also involved.

The diversion “at a minimum caused a massive denial of service to G Suite (business collaboration tools) and Google Search” and “put valuable Google traffic in the hands of ISPs (internet service providers) in countries with a long history of internet surveillance”, the network-intelligence company ThousandEyes said in a blog post.

A Google status page noted that “access to some Google services was impacted” and said the cause was “external to Google”. The company offered little more information.

The type of traffic misdirection employed, known as border gateway protocol hijacking, can knock essential services offline and be used in espionage and financial theft. It can result either from misconfiguration – usually due to human error – or from malicious action.

Most network traffic to Google services – 94 per cent as of October 27 – is encrypted, which shields it from prying eyes even if diverted.