It’s now possible to check your ISP’s use of security measures
There is a new site that allows users to check on their internet service providers to see if they’re implementing basic security measures.
The website named “Is BGP Safe Yet” allows users to test the safety of their ISP’s Border Gateway Protocol (BGP).
The BGP is used to pick the best route for data on the internet.
If this pathway isn’t secure then major internet disruptions could result, as the data isn’t streamlined.
BGP disruptions do happen frequently, though usually by accident. Unfortunately, the BGP can also be hijacked and used for spying, data interception, and other such BGP attacks.
It’s easy for internet service providers to make the BGP pathway secure; they just need to implement an RPKI certification system.
Matthew Prince of Cloudflare decided to take a stand against lazy ISP’s that haven’t done enough to protect their users by launching the “Is BGP Safe Yet” site in order to call out ISP’s that aren’t implementing the necessary RPKI certification system.
“With that last big route leak from a few weeks ago out of Russia, it was a point at which our engineering team said enough is enough, it’s time for us to start naming and shaming the companies who aren’t doing this right,” says Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince. “Anything that goes wrong anywhere on the internet, we get blamed for it, which isn’t right! Our customers pay us to make sure their internet connections are fast and secure and reliable. So BGP is one of these really frustrating areas that we can’t solve ourselves.”
By going to their Is BGP Safe Yet website, you can click a button that will test your ISP by offering your ISP a legitimate route and an invalid one to load two pages. If your ISP catches the invalid route and only loads the page on the real route, it passes the test. If it accepts both routes as valid, your ISP will fail, meaning that it hasn’t yet implemented the BGP protections to check for bad routes and filter them.
You can choose from there if you want to send a tweet out that shames your ISP into action.
Hopefully, ISPs that are failing this simple security fix will focus their efforts on implementing the necessary changes in order to keep all of our data safe.
As always, if we can be of help with your network or computer, give us a call here at RHYNO Networks. (855) 749-6648
