The Relation on Prefix Hijacking and the Internet Hierarchy

Abstract

Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) is the de facto inter-domain routing protocol. There have been many incidents of IP prefix hijacking by BGP protocol in the Internet. Attacks may hijack victim's address space to disrupt network services or perpetrate malicious activities such as spamming and DoS attacks without disclosing identity. The relation on prefix hijacking and the Internet hierarchy is presented in this paper. The Internet is classified into three hierarchies based on the power-law and commercial relations of autonomous systems. The relation of network topology and prefix hijacking influence is presented for all sorts of hijacking events in different layers. The result shows that the hierarchical nature of network influences the prefix hijacking greatly.