Chinese Internet diversion was worrisome, report says

[struggle4progress]

By Ellen Nakashima

For about 20 minutes in April, a state-owned Chinese telecommunications firm rerouted massive amounts of Internet traffic, including from U.S. military and government networks, through Chinese servers before sending it on its way, according to a Congressional commission report out today.

Evidence related to the incident does not indicate whether it was deliberate, but computer security researchers have noted the capability could enable "severe malicious activities," said the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission in its latest report to Congress.

The incident affected traffic to about 15 percent of the world's Internet network routes, the report said. There are more than 300,000 such routes in the world, said Dmitri Alperovitch, vice president of threat research for the computer security firm McAfee Inc., who briefed the commission on the incident. Among those affected were sites owned by the U.S. Senate, the Army, Navy, Marine Corps, Office of the Secretary of Defense, Department of Commerce and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, as well as commercial Web sites such as those for Dell, Yahoo!, Microsoft and IBM, the report said ...

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/checkpoint-washington/2010/11/chinese_internet_diversion_was.html

[struggle4progress]

1. How China swallowed 15% of 'Net traffic for 18 minutes

In a 300+ page report (PDF) today, the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission provided the US Congress with a detailed overview of what's been happening in China—including a curious incident in which 15 percent of the world's Internet traffic suddenly passed through Chinese servers on the way to its destination ...
http://arstechnica.com/security/news/2010/11/how-china-swallowed-15-of-net-traffic-for-18-minutes.ars

Includes link to report

[FiveGoodMen]

2. Hard to believe they did it without any help.