Route to Bugs: Analyzing the Security of BGP Message Parsing
Marco dos Santos and Thibault Guiot audit BGP message parsers across seven modern routing implementations, exposing malformed packet vulnerabilities that disrupt transit.
Summary
The Overlooked Attack Surface of BGP Parsers
While internet routing security typically focuses on route hijacking and cryptographic validation via RPKI, implementation bugs in BGP packet parsing remain a critical single point of failure.
Auditing Seven Modern BGP Implementations
Marco dos Santos and Thibault Guiot present a systematic evaluation of seven leading open-source and proprietary BGP routing daemons used in data centers and ISP backbones.
Exploiting Malformed Route Attribute Messages
Fuzzing complex BGP path attributes (such as AS_PATH, communities, and MP-BGP extensions) revealed parsing flaws where a single malformed packet induces daemon crashes or memory corruption.
Hardening Global Internet Routing Software
The authors provide recommendations for protocol developers to implement robust fuzzing pipelines, memory-safe parsers, and defensive validation in core routing infrastructure.
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