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The recent Optus outage that affected millions of customers across Australia was a major disruption that involved businesses, Melbourne’s rail network, and hospitals. Services began returning to normal about nine hours after the issues first began [1].
The exact cause of the outage has not been officially confirmed by Optus, but it is speculated to be related to a network issue that began around 4 am. This timing suggests that it may have been due to a software or firmware update, or possibly an incorrect routing message sent within or from outside the Optus network [2].
One leading theory is that the outage was caused by a “BGP prefix flood,” as suggested by Matt Tett, the managing director of Enex TestLab. In this scenario, one of Optus’ routers would have received incorrect routing information, causing a network gridlock. This problem could have originated from Optus or an external entity, and network operators noticed an unusual surge in BGP route announcements from the typical 10,000-20,000 to 940,000 just before the problems started [3][4]
The Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) is a system that allows networks to exchange routing information, and a BGP prefix flood suggests that incorrect or excessive routing information was propagated through the network, leading to a shutdown of sessions and a complete halt in traffic [5]. This incorrect instruction might have come from an internet exchange or directly from another internet provider or content provider [6].
Although the nature of the incident raised concerns about a possible cyberattack, Optus CEO Kelly Bayer Rosmarin indicated that there were no signs of the outage being the result of a hack or cyberattack [7].
It’s important to note that once the issue was identified, resolving it took several hours because routing changes need to propagate throughout the entire network, which can be a time-consuming process, especially if the network is already under strain from misrouting [8]
Further investigation is required to confirm the exact cause and to prevent future occurrences. Optus has pledged to conduct a thorough root cause analysis to get to the bottom of the incident [9].
