The White House indicated on Tuesday that it hopes to strengthen weak Internet routing security, particularly the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP).

BGP pretty much glues together the internet as we know it. It is used to manage the paths your online traffic takes between the networks, known as Autonomous Systems or ASes, that together make up the Internet. As noted in the Roadmap to Enhancing Internet Routing Security, published by the White House Office of the National Cyber Director (ONCD) today, BGP was not designed with security in mind.

"As originally designed and used today, BGP does not provide sufficient security and resiliency features for the risks we currently face," the report [PDF] says. "Concerns about fundamental vulnerabilities have been expressed for more than 25 years."

BGP does not check whether a remote network announcing a traffic path change is authorized to do so. It also does not verify that messages exchanged between networks are authentic, or check whether routing messages violate business policies between adjacent networks.