---
title: Google Traffic Suddenly Routed Through China, Russia, and Nigeria
description: Was Google web traffic hijacked? Here is why some Google traffic suddenly got routed through China, Russia, and Nigeria. Was it BGP hijacking?
---

[SecureWorld News ](https://www.secureworld.io/industry-news)

# [Google Traffic Suddenly Routed Through China, Russia, and Nigeria](https://www.secureworld.io/industry-news/google-traffic-hijacked)

 Written by [SecureWorld News Team](https://www.secureworld.io/industry-news/author/secureworld-news-team) | Fri | Nov 16, 2018 | 4:27 PM Z

Why did 74 minutes of Google traffic get routed through Russia, China, and Nigeria this past week?

Network intelligence firm ThousandEyes sounded the alarm on Monday, as [WIRED](https://www.wired.com/story/google-internet-traffic-china-russia-rerouted/) reports:

ThousandEyes saw Google traffic rerouting over the Russian ISP TransTelecom, to China Telecom, toward the Nigerian ISP Main One. "Russia, China, and Nigeria ISPs and 150-plus [IP address] prefixes—this is obviously very suspicious," says Alex Henthorne-Iwane, vice-president of product marketing at ThousandEyes. "It doesn’t look like a mistake."

Those in cybersecurity thought it looked like a case of BGP hijacking (Border Gateway Protocol), which has happened before. Like the time in 2018 when [AWS traffic was hijacked and routed through Russia](https://www.secureworld.io/industry-news/web-traffic-hijacked).

However, in this case, hackers didn't cause the switch; instead, it was human error. 

Africa's digital backbone provider, MainOne, investigated and tweeted about what happened.

[View full post](https://www.secureworld.io/industry-news/google-traffic-hijacked)

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