Centrality-Based Analysis of BGP Path Hijacking

The Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) is the protocol used to exchange routing information between Autonomous Systems on the Internet, but it does not provide complete mechanisms to verify the legitimacy of the advertised AS paths. This limitation makes BGP vulnerable to hijacking attacks, where false routing information can redirect traffic through an unauthorized AS. This thesis investigates BGP path hijacking through simulation and centrality-based analysis. A BGP environment is reproduced by considering the valley-free routing model, and the best paths selected by the simulated routing process are extracted for analysis. Centrality metrics are then computed before and after the introduction of a hijack in order to evaluate how the attack changes the role of the involved ASes within the routing system. By comparing the centrality values obtained before and after the attack, the work studies whether changes in the position of an AS within the simulated routing system can provide useful information for the analysis of BGP path hijacking. The results show a visible correlation between an attack and a change in centrality metrics, posing the bases for future works to mitigate this critical security problem.