First, I think it is best for us to understand what is external BGP and then dive into how it is insecure and how it can lead to massive problems. Now there are two parties, internal and external routing protocols. An example of an internal routing protocol would be EIGRP (Enhanced Interior Gateway Routing Protocol) or OSPF (Open Shortest Path First), as these routes would be advertised internally or within a given network, but never to the internet. Therefore, external routing protocols are the opposite, they are not to be used within the network, but instead to connect networks together*. This is where BGP comes into play, also known as Border Gateway Protocol, it is the routing protocol of the internet. In simple terms, what we call the internet is the just the massive connection of autonomous systems or AS, which is just the assignment of a publicly known number used to identify a given network or set of IPs. Currently there is an estimated ~84,000 allocated autonomous system networks. BGP also differs from internal routing protocols in that it does not broadcast the entire routing table, instead at boot a nearby peer will hand over their table, then only updates are relayed after. In addition, BGP routes are stored in RIB, or Routing Information Base, where multiple routes to a specific destination are stored. Here, routes are then placed, based on best choice by the router, into the routing table to be used. (The routing table picks the route that uses the least number of AS hops.) This allows for the routing table to be kept small and to update only if needed. Because of the RIB, if a route needs to be removed, but only exists here, then it is silently dropped and no update will be sent. Also, because of this functionality there is no need for RIB entries to time out, so they exist in the base as long as they are valid.
Now, after discussing how BGP works, it is important to talk about its faults and how it has lead to some pretty drastic mishaps. Poor configuration of BGP has plagued the internet since the beginning, but now that more of our lives are connected and better information of proper maintenance is available, it is more important now than ever to educate ourselves. BGP does not appear to be going away anytime soon, so the best thing we can do as security engineers to help protect our organizations is by learning from others mistakes. Let us take Verizon for example, in June of 2019 a massive route leak impacted huge parts of the Internet. In short, a small Internet Service Provider company named DQE Communications used a BGP optimizer which preferred specific routes over generalized ones and then advertised these routes to their client Allegeny Technologies. From here it was then advertised to Verizon where it was further advertised to the world. Which in return, rerouted traffic to this preferred path causing a massive fault as this route was not prepared to deal with so much traffic. Now the advertisement should have stopped at Verizon, but because it did not around 20% of the Internet was impacted. In an act to prevent this from occurring, the major thing that should have been implemented is to impose a hard limit of prefixes expected to be received on a BGP session. We will actually explore BGP security more in a later blog so keep following along. Overall, BGP is the routing protocol of the Internet and while it is the backbone, it does not mean that it is perfect by any means, but we has engineers have to do our best so that another issue like this does not occur. *For simplicity sake we are going to forget about Internal BGP and will not discuss it. If you want to learn more about how BGP can be used on the internal side visit this link: https://networklessons.com/bgp/internal-bgp-border-gateway-protocol-explained
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Understanding VPNs or Virtual Private Networks is one of the cornerstones of network security. In short, a virtual private network is used to extend, typically a company's private network, across the public network or Internet. This allows devices that reside outside of the network to connect directly to the private networks infrastructure. Now there are different types of VPN services, along with different types of protocols and throughout this post we are going to explore the most common of each.
While there are many specific types of VPNs there are two major types that we will be discussing, which is Client-based and Site-to-Site VPN. A client-based VPN is probably the one you are most familiar with, this allows a user to connect to a private network remotely. You can use this as a corporate employee while traveling to still access all the necessary services to do your job. However, following within the same lines, companies offer services |