YouTube gets blocked

It appears that some overzealous engineers at Pakistan Telecom in their bid to block YouTube hijacked its IP routing table by accident. They wanted to make sure pakistani internet users trying to access the site would be redirected. To make it worse, the information was leaked in to the wider internet leading to Internet Service Providers around the world blocking YouTube. 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. This caused YouTube’s website to be down for nearly an hour. The pakistani engineers realized their mistake after hearing from their counterparts at YouTube.

• Posted in: Internet