# Pakistan blocks YouTube, ends up getting blocked from the internet.



## kalpik (Feb 25, 2008)

> 4:30 PM Eastern (US).
> The telecom company that carries most of Pakistan’s traffic, PCCW, has found it necessary to shut Pakistan off from the Internet while they filter out the malicious routes that a Pakistani ISP, PieNet, announced earlier today. Evidently PieNet took this step to enforce a decree from the Pakistani government that ISP’s must block access to YouTube because it was a source of blasphemous content.
> I cannot let the irony pass with out commenting. A religious state, Pakistan, identifies a content provider, YouTube, as the source of blasphemous, seditious content and orders, King Canute style, that the Internet tides be stopped. A zealous ISP ignorantly decides the best way to comply with the decree is to re-route all of YouTube’s IP addresses to whatever site they thought was more appropriate. The first repercussion was that YouTube disappeared from the Internet for almost an hour. I suspect the second repercussion was that Pakistan’s Internet access crawled to a halt as all of a sudden they were handling IP requests for one of the busiest sites in the world. As of this writing YouTube has announced more granular routes so that at least in the US they supercede the routes announced by PieNet. The rest of the world is still struggling. So, while working on a fix that will filter out the spurious route announcements, PCCW has found it necessary to shut down Pakistan’s Internet access. The leadership of Pakistan just created a massive Denial of Service on their own country.
> I could say: “be careful what you wish for” to those elements that object to free and open access to information and expression of ideas. But to put it in terms they might understand better: *Do not anger the Internet gods or  you will suffer their wrath!*





*Source.
*


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## Tech_Wiz (Feb 25, 2008)

rofl


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## ray|raven (Feb 25, 2008)

Lolz.
And we call these guys our arch-enemies?


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## Gigacore (Feb 25, 2008)

he he, finally peace of mind for pakistanies


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## fun2sh (Feb 25, 2008)

great!!


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## NucleusKore (Feb 25, 2008)

Just shows how DAFT they can be.


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## enticer86 (Feb 25, 2008)

Very very nice...


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## nvidia (Feb 25, 2008)

Lolz..


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## naveen_reloaded (Feb 26, 2008)

i simply cant understand ....

wht happenened actually ?? paki wanted to filter utube ??? then wht ?? sorry .. cant understand that article..


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## kumarmohit (Feb 26, 2008)

Must have routed it to Yahoo or something. They are the busiest sites in the world. But I still do not understand, how could it have taken down entire connectivity.

It looks like they took the entore routing of Youtube upon themselves or atleast a major part of it. Its all a big mess.


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## desiibond (Feb 26, 2008)

hehe. never play with youtube


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## naveen_reloaded (Feb 26, 2008)

exactly ^^^666


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## kalpik (Feb 26, 2008)

naveen_reloaded said:


> i simply cant understand ....
> 
> wht happenened actually ?? paki wanted to filter utube ??? then wht ?? sorry .. cant understand that article..


Pakistan wanted to show a "Not Available" or "Blocked" page whenever someone tried to access YouTube from Pakistan. For this, they wanted to re-route all traffic going to YouTube so that it may reach their own "Not Available" page. All this re-routing is done by inserting/deleting/modifying rules in a routing table. The only mistake they did was that they placed their rules over and above YouTube's own GLOBAL rules! Hence they entire global traffic of YouTube was diverted to pakistan's "Not Available" page


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## naveen_reloaded (Feb 26, 2008)

kalpik said:


> Pakistan wanted to show a "Not Available" or "Blocked" page whenever someone tried to access YouTube from Pakistan. For this, they wanted to re-route all traffic going to YouTube so that it may reach their own "Not Available" page. All this re-routing is done by inserting/deleting/modifying rules in a routing table. The only mistake they did was that they placed their rules over and above YouTube's own GLOBAL rules! Hence they entire global traffic of YouTube was diverted to pakistan's "Not Available" page





how can they redirect the whole world`s youtube request from pakistan..???

i dont get it ???


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## kalpik (Feb 26, 2008)

^^ Cause they corrupted the Internet's routing table! All high priority rules are propagated to all the other routers, and they adjust their routing tables accordingly..


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## naveen_reloaded (Feb 26, 2008)

they corrupted internets routing ... sorry .. but how could they .. if they can .. cant a hackers can ??? 

sorry again but how can they???

does all internet request flow thru pakistan ??? i dont think so... if i am correct...
sorry for being so innocent.. i dont get it... may be some wiki reference may help..


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## kalpik (Feb 26, 2008)

^^ A hacker does not own an international gateway.. Pakistan does.


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## hullap (Feb 26, 2008)

cant they use a proxy


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## kalpik (Feb 26, 2008)

What good would a proxy do.. If youtube's IP address space is owned by pakistani servers?


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## hullap (Feb 26, 2008)

kalpik said:


> What good would a proxy do.. If youtube's IP address space is owned by pakistani servers?


lol there dead
 they cant even use stage6


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## int86 (Feb 26, 2008)

Kalpik
So isnt there any regulation or method to boycott those ill-functioning gatways . I am supposing every country has a Gateway to connect to internet like we have VSNL.


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## kalpik (Feb 26, 2008)

^^ ofcourse there are! That's why pakistan was cut off from the internet temporarily! It was actually a mistake on pakistan's part.. It was not intentional.


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## blackpearl (Feb 26, 2008)

naveen_reloaded said:


> they corrupted internets routing ... sorry .. but how could they .. if they can .. cant a hackers can ???
> 
> sorry again but how can they???
> 
> ...



They modified their routing tables to divert traffic to youtube. The modified tables got propagated to all other international routers and they modified their own tables accordingly. This happens will all high priority routers and DNS servers. These records get updated throughout the Internet. Hence the whole global traffic to youtube was divereted.


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## preshit.net (Feb 26, 2008)

@naveen
If you're an ISP, you are capable of doing that. 
What they did was accidental and unintentional, and they rectified it as soon as they realized it.


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## Choto Cheeta (Feb 26, 2008)

I thought ICANN is there to make sure no one actually do this !!!! As to protect and make sure IP (Numbers) are interlinked properlly !!!

Still didnt get it, Pakisthan would getway with this violation of ICANN own Rules ??

its simple fact on a network, 2 computers cant have same IP address  the rule is same with Internet also... and just like system admin of a local network, ICANN is there to make sure, that no 2 place claims to own or tries to point network traffic to same IP !!!

ICANN was meant to solve this problem which we saw with Paki and Youtube !!!


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## naveen_reloaded (Feb 26, 2008)

now i get somtthing out of this conversation...

the router into the country is modified to make sure utube end up in some page created by gov... 
anyway.. cat they use some encrypted way to access utube???

so wht and all sites are taken away from paki ppl??


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## Count Dracula (Feb 26, 2008)

Uh.What?,I saw my Pakistani friend online at 12:30 AM yesterday.Lol.


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## Voldy (Feb 26, 2008)

Hehehe thanks for the info


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## mehaman (Feb 26, 2008)

that means what ?  someone in pakistan can use proxy na?


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## Pathik (Feb 26, 2008)

Choto Cheeta said:


> I thought ICANN is there to make sure no one actually do this !!!! As to protect and make sure IP (Numbers) are interlinked properlly !!!
> 
> Still didnt get it, Pakisthan would getway with this violation of ICANN own Rules ??
> 
> ...


Exactly. Even if Pakis managed to redirect youtube to their custom error page, This should have been effective only for those who use that ISP in Pakistan. How did it affect the routing tables of all the DNS servers around the world.?? Who decides the priority of such requests?


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## blackpearl (Feb 26, 2008)

That's the problem. Anyone with access to these high priority gateways and routers can messup with the config and bring the whole net down.



Pathik said:


> How did it affect the routing tables of all the DNS servers around the world.?? Who decides the priority of such requests?



Thats' how the whole Internet works. The tables get updated every 24 hours as new websites and servers get added and changed around the world. If you launch a website on a server in India, even a visitor in US can access it. How? The DNS records from your website's registrar gets propagated to the top level DNS server from where it gets distributed to all DNS servers around the world.

The case with Pakistan is a bit different though. It's explained nicely in the following. You have to know how routing works to understand it

*arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080225-insecure-routing-redirects-youtube-to-pakistan.html


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## kalpik (Feb 26, 2008)

^^ Thanks.. I was really out of words trying to explain the situation 

Like he said, you need to know how routing works to understand it 

Another link that *may* help to understand how routing works..

*en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Border_Gateway_Protocol


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## Pathik (Feb 26, 2008)

Great article.. Thanks..
BTW


			
				arstechnica said:
			
		

> On the North American Network Operators Group (NANOG) mailing list, where many engineers in charge of Internet routing hang out, the consensus is that this was an accident. Only one or two people suggest that it may be a malicious act, possibly a trial of something bigger.


Possibly.. Can't trust Pakis.


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## enticer86 (Feb 26, 2008)

Offtopic: My aunt is a senior person with NANOG


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## The Conqueror (Feb 28, 2008)

lol


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## Faun (Feb 28, 2008)

naveen_reloaded said:


> they corrupted internets routing ... sorry .. but how could they .. if they can .. cant a hackers can ???
> 
> sorry again but how can they???
> 
> ...



u need to read abt routing protocols 
BGP etc


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