Is The Border Gateway Protocol Safe?

This paper is about the security issues of organisations that are planning to run their own Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) router to provide a redundant internet connection. It is aimed at a wide audience from the non technical management to the technicians who will be implementing the BGP router. For those not familiar with Internet Protocol (IP) routing and the BGP process a high level description is included in section two. This paper includes the following sections; description of the scenario, a brief description of IP and interdomain routing, the risks when using BGP, mitigation steps and future developments. It also aims to draw together the current thinking on BGP security. BGP has had some recent press attention as people have been looking at critical infrastructure post Sept 11. This paper should give you an understanding of the concerns that these people have in relation to BGP.