Route to Bugs: Analyzing the Security of BGP Message Parsing

"Discover the shocking vulnerabilities in BGP implementations, affecting 95% of identified issues, and learn how threat actors are exploiting them for denial-of-service attacks and more.

Key takeaways
  • BGP implementations are vulnerable to parsing issues, accounting for 95% of vulnerabilities identified in a study.
  • The study found 61 vulnerabilities in BGP implementations, with 49% affecting routers and 82% leading to denial-of-service attacks.
  • BGP is widely used beyond internet service providers and internet exchanges, including in internal data center routing and layer 3 VPNs.
  • Threat actors are exploiting these vulnerabilities, with 3 CVEs being actively exploited in 2022.
  • The study found that BGP implementations have matured well and do not have obvious mistakes, but misconfigurations and implementation issues still exist.
  • The study recommends prioritizing routing security and patching devices to mitigate risks.
  • Network function disaggregation may make open source implementations more popular, increasing the importance of keeping their security in check.
  • The study invites researchers to contribute to fuzzing new versions and implementations to identify vulnerabilities.
  • The study also recommends analyzing the supply chain and patching devices to mitigate risks.
  • There are still many open source and closed source BGP implementations, and the study recommends analyzing each one to identify vulnerabilities.
  • The study found that BGP is not just used for internet routing, but also for internal data center routing, layer 3 VPNs, and other use cases.