BGP ORIGIN attribute manipulation and its impact on the Internet

According to Cloudflare Blog, research reveals that roughly seventy percent of observed Border Gateway Protocol paths have modified ORIGIN attributes—values that shouldn't be changed after being set by the originating network. BGP ORIGIN indicates how a route was injected into the Internet, and it's supposed to stay unchanged. But network operators are rewriting it—especially to IGP, a more preferable value—to make their routes look better and attract more traffic through their networks. About ten percent of direct network peers are manipulating these attributes to game route selection and draw more traffic. While Internet standards say this shouldn't happen, the practice has become widely accepted, turning route selection into a revenue-driven arms race.

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