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Mutually Agreed Norms on Routing Security (MANRS) is an industry-led initiative to improve Internet routing security by encouraging participating networks to implement a series of mandatory or recommended actions. MANRS members must register their IP prefixes in a trusted routing database and use such information to prevent propagation of invalid routing information. MANRS membership has increased significantly in recent years, but the impact of the MANRS initiative on the overall Internet routing security remains unclear. In this paper, we provide the first independent look into the MANRS ecosystem by using publicly available data to analyze the routing behavior of participant networks. We quantify MANRS participants' level of conformance with the stated requirements, and compare the behavior of MANRS and non-MANRS networks. While not all MANRS members fully comply with all required actions, we find that they are more likely to implement routing security practices described in MANRS actions. We assess the relevance of the MANRS effort in securing the overall routing ecosystem. We found that as of May 2022, over 83% of MANRS networks were conformant to the route filtering requirement by dropping BGP messages with invalid information according to authoritative records, and over 95% were conformant to the routing information facilitation requirement, registering their resources in authoritative databases. 

The Internet Route Registry (IRR) and Resource Public Key Infrastructure (RPKI) both emerged as different solutions to improve routing security in the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) by allowing networks to register information and develop route filters based on information other networks have registered. RPKI is a crypto system, with associated complexity and policy challenges; it has seen substantial but slowing adoption. IRR databases often contain inaccurate records due to lack of validation standards. Given the widespread use of IRR for routing security purposes, this inaccuracy merits further study. We study IRR accuracy by quantifying the consistency between IRR and RPKI records, analyze the causes of inconsistency, and examine which ASes are contributing correct IRR information. In October 2021, we found ROAs for around 20% of RADB IRR records, and a consistency of 38% and 60% in v4 and v6. For RIPE IRR, we found ROAs for 47% records and a consistency of 73% and 82% in v4 and v6. For APNIC IRR, we found ROAs for 76% records and a high consistency of 98% and 99% in v4 and v6. For AFRINIC IRR, we found ROAs for only 4% records and a consistency of 93% and 97% in v4 and v6. 

This paper is concerned with the global routing system of the Internet, its serious and persistent vulnerabilities, the multi-disciplinary considerations shaping this space, and recent trends that finally improve its security. We report real-world evidence of the state of routing security with the goal of discussing possible options for better security. We offer two high-level conclusions. First, in designing an approach it is all-important to understand complexities and incentives for deployment. Second, any scheme that is picked for deployment will take time to have an effect, so having a realistic view of how quickly change can be accomplished is essential. 

Securing the Internet’s inter-domain routing system against illicit prefix advertisements by third-party networks remains a great concern for the research, standardization, and operator communities. After many unsuccessful attempts to deploy additional security mechanisms for BGP, we now witness increasing adoption of the RPKI (Resource Public Key Infrastructure). Backed by strong cryptography, the RPKI allows network operators to register their BGP prefixes together with the legitimate Autonomous System (AS) number that may originate them via BGP. Recent research shows an encouraging trend: an increasing number of networks around the globe start to register their prefixes in the RPKI. While encouraging, the actual benefit of registering prefixes in the RPKI eventually depends on whether transit providers in the Internet enforce the RPKI’s content, i.e., configure their routers to validate prefix announcements and filter invalid BGP announcements. In this work, we present a broad empirical study tackling the question: To what degree does registration in the RPKI protect a network from illicit announcements of their prefixes, such as prefix hijacks? To this end, we first present a longitudinal study of filtering behavior of transit providers in the Internet, and second we carry out a detailed study of the visibility of legitimate and illegitimate prefix announcements in the global routing table, contrasting prefixes registered in the RPKI with those not registered. We find that an increasing number of transit and access providers indeed do enforce RPKI filtering, which translates to a direct benefit for the networks using the RPKI in the case of illicit announcements of their address space. Our findings bode well for further RPKI adoption and for increasing routing security in the Internet.