Last updated: April 29, 2026
The internet works because BGP (routing), DNS (naming), and CAs (identity via TLS certs) all extend trust from single actors to global scale. Each layer was designed with minimal cryptographic verification. Each layer has been abused at scale. This module covers the three internet-wide trust failures every defender and pentester should understand — because they’re not going away.
Why this happens
BGP (1989), DNS (1983), and the CA system (1994) were designed to work, not to be secure. The founding assumption was “participants behave honestly.” When participants have turned out to not be fully honest (or compromised, or coerced), the layers have been patched with various cryptographic mitigations (DNSSEC, RPKI, Certificate Transparency) — but deployment is uneven, enforcement is weak, and the fundamental trust model remains “we trust the registered authority.”
The result: a motivated actor (often nation-state, sometimes criminal) can hijack traffic at scale by subverting one of these layers.
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