Measuring the fragmentation of the Internet: the case of the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) during the Ukrainian crisis

Abstract

This paper presents the results of a year-long research project conducted by GEODE (geode.science), a multidisciplinary team made up of geographers, computer scientists and area specialists.We developed a new methodology for mapping cyberspace in its lower layers (infrastructures and routing protocols) in order to measure and represent the level of fragmentation of the Internet in areas of geopolitical tensions using the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP). Our hypothesis was that BGP could be used for geopolitical reasons in the context of a large-scale crisis, leading to a further fragmentation of the Internet. We focused on the Ukrainian crisis.BGP is a core protocol of cyberspace that connects the tens of thousands of autonomous systems (ASes) that compose the Internet. Based on a 35-year-old technology, this protocol is easy to manipulate to re-route Internet traffic or even to cut off entire regions (BGP hijacks). Our results show actions on BGP implemented right after the 2014 Maidan Revolution, when Russian forces took control of the Crimean Peninsula and started to back separatist forces in Eastern Ukraine. In both cases, Russian authorities and separatist forces modified BGP routes in order to divert the local Internet traffic from continental Ukraine -- drawing a kind of "digital frontline" consistent with the military one. The study of Donbass and of the Crimean Peninsula leads to important methodological findings to (1) define and map digital borders at the routing level; (2) analyze the strategies of actors conducting actions via BGP; (3) categorize these strategies, from traffic re-routing to cutting-off entire regions for intelligence or military purposes; and (4) anticipate future uses for BGP manipulations by identifying strategic bottlenecks within the network.