Google ‘hit by WORST EVER cyberattack’ with traffic ‘hijacked’ and routed through Russia and China in ‘war games experiment’
The tech giant has yet to reveal what data, if any, was affected by the suspected security breach or how many users may have been put at risk
GOOGLE is suspected to have been hit by its "worst" ever data diversion attack which reportedly re-routed traffic through servers in Russia, China and Nigeria.
Security experts believe the feared "breach" - which happened last night - may even have been part of a top secret "war game experiment."
Data from Google searches, cloud-hosting services and the company's business tool G Suite were all feared to have been affected by the one-and-a-half-hour problem.
The internet giant has now been accused of downplaying the incident - which one expert described as the "worst" of its kind in the firm's history.
A Google status page simply stated that access to some of its services had been "impacted' adding the cause was "external to Google."
A Google spokesperson said today: “We’re aware that a portion of internet traffic was affected by incorrect routing of IP addresses, and access to some Google services was impacted.
"The root cause of the issue was external to Google and there was no compromise of Google services.”
The Associated Press reported the re-routing may have been the result of a border gateway protocol hijacking attack - when an internet hub responsible for directing global internet traffic is compromised to send that traffic to the wrong destinations.
Intelligence company ThousandEyes claimed some of Google’s search and cloud hosting services were routed through Russian (Transtelecom), Chinese (China Telecom), and Nigerian (MainOne) telecommunications companies.
Alex Henthorn-Iwane, an executive at ThousandEyes, called Monday’s incident the worst affecting Google that his company has seen.
He said he suspected nation-state involvement because the traffic was effectively landing at state-run China Telecom.
He added the hijacking may even have been "a war-game experiment".
A recent study by the US Naval War College and Tel Aviv University scholars claimed China systematically hijacks and diverts US internet traffic.
Experts are now concerned about the prospect of the nations involved gaining access to users' private data by monitoring re-routed traffic.
The suspected attack may also be a sign of things to come as cyber warfare steps up between the West and its global competitors.
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The type of traffic misdirection employed, known as border gateway protocol hijacking, can knock essential services offline and facilitate espionage and financial theft.
It can normally result either from human error or from malicious action.
Service interruptions lasted for nearly one and a half hours and ended about 10.30pm in the UK last night, it's been reported.
More than 90 per cent of network traffic to Google services is encrypted, which shields it from prying eyes even if diverted.
The US Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to a request for comment, reports AP.
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