Over the last several years, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has been taking a more active role both in anticipating the need for ever greater communications network security measures necessary to counter threats as well as potentially forging a new role in protecting the integrity of data that flows through the Internet. The latest evidence of this security consciousness is a recent Notice of Inquiry (“Notice”) adopted by the FCC seeking information to better understand the scope of Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) routing system security vulnerabilities, and the means to address them.
While the FCC acts in tandem with federal partners — National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), the Department of Homeland Security, and the National Telecommunications and Information Administration — and consistently urges the communications sector to defend against cyber threats, the private ownership of U.S. communications networks means this sector often must rely upon the diligence of private parties to strengthen the cybersecurity of vital communications services and critical infrastructure. This Notice seeks comment on vulnerabilities threatening the security and integrity of the BGP, which is central to the Internet’s global routing system. The FCC also wants to understand these vulnerabilities’ effects on the trustworthiness of transmission of data from email, e-commerce, and bank transactions to interconnected Voice-over-Internet-Protocol (VoIP) and 9-1-1 calls, as well as how best to address them.
BGP is the routing protocol used to exchange reachability information among independently managed networks on the Internet. BGP was not initially designed to include security features to ensure trust in the information that it is used to exchange. As a result, a bad network actor can deliberately falsify BGP reachability information to redirect traffic to itself or ..
Support the originator by clicking the read the rest link below.
