Could a single BGP trick really break the internet?
A new “BGP Vortex” claim says yes - by abusing route oscillation and BGP communities to trigger endless update loops and exhaust router CPU. So we check what actually holds up in the real world.
In this Threat Talks Deep Dive, Rob Maas, Field CTO at ON2IT, sits down with Eric Nghia Nguyen Duy, Network Engineer at AMS-IX, to understand what BGP (short for Border Gateway Protocol) actually does, how the proposed Vortex mechanism works (route oscillation + community behavior), and why real-world internet operators are far more resilient than the headline suggests.
Yes, it’s an attention-grabbing claim.
No, it’s not a “break the whole internet tomorrow” button.
Resources
• BGP Vortex research paper: https://www.usenix.org/system/files/usenixsecurity25-stoeger.pdf
• BGP Vortex presentation video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dd6L1mdQLmk
• Threat Talks: https://threat-talks.com/
• ON2IT (Zero Trust as a Service): https://on2it.net/
• AMS-IX: https://www.ams-ix.net/ams
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