Pakistan's attempts to block access to YouTube have been blamed for an almost global blackout of the video website for more than an hour on Sunday. BBC News has learned that the outage was almost certainly connected to Pakistan Telecom and Asian internet service provider PCCW.
A leading net professional said the global outage was "probably a mistake". Pakistan ordered internet service providers to block the site because of content deemed offensive to Islam.
The BBC News website's technology editor, Darren Waters, says that to block Pakistan's citizens from accessing YouTube it is believed Pakistan Telecom "hijacked" the web server address of the popular video site. Those details were then passed on to the country's internet service providers so that anyone in Pakistan attempting to go to YouTube was instead re-directed to a different address. But the details of the "hijack" were leaked out into the wider internet from PCCW and as a result YouTube was mistakenly blocked by internet service providers around the world.
The block on the servers was lifted once PCCW had been told of the issue by engineers at YouTube. A leading net professional told BBC News: "This was probably a simple mistake by an engineer at Pakistan Telecom. There's nothing to suggest this was malicious." IP hijacking involves taking over a web site's unique address by corrupting the internet's routing tables, which direct the flow of data around the world. No-one at YouTube or PCCW was immediately available for comment.
A leading net professional said the global outage was "probably a mistake". Pakistan ordered internet service providers to block the site because of content deemed offensive to Islam.
The BBC News website's technology editor, Darren Waters, says that to block Pakistan's citizens from accessing YouTube it is believed Pakistan Telecom "hijacked" the web server address of the popular video site. Those details were then passed on to the country's internet service providers so that anyone in Pakistan attempting to go to YouTube was instead re-directed to a different address. But the details of the "hijack" were leaked out into the wider internet from PCCW and as a result YouTube was mistakenly blocked by internet service providers around the world.
The block on the servers was lifted once PCCW had been told of the issue by engineers at YouTube. A leading net professional told BBC News: "This was probably a simple mistake by an engineer at Pakistan Telecom. There's nothing to suggest this was malicious." IP hijacking involves taking over a web site's unique address by corrupting the internet's routing tables, which direct the flow of data around the world. No-one at YouTube or PCCW was immediately available for comment.
1 comment:
I gather any information about Pakistan, because I think this country has much more interesting than we all know. Thanks for this video. I'll add it to my collection.
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