January 5, 2026
Packets, power, and plot twists
There Were BGP Anomalies During the Venezuela Blackout
Internet routes went weird as Caracas went dark — commenters smell cyber ops
TLDR: Internet routing took an unusual detour through Venezuela’s state provider with questionable transit in the mix, right as a blackout hit. Commenters are torn between “covert cyber op” and “routing noise,” with spicy theories of spying and grid kill-switches fueling memes and alarm — showing how internet plumbing can be weaponized.
As Venezuela’s lights flickered out, internet sleuths zeroed in on strange BGP behavior — think of BGP as the internet’s map telling data which road to take. Cloudflare’s Radar showed routes oddly detouring through CANTV (the state ISP) with Sparkle and GlobeNet in the path, plus a spike in announcements and a dip in address space. Translation: traffic took a weird road trip right before things went dark. And the crowd went full “enhance!” mode. One camp insists this screams US cyber ops, quoting a general about layered effects and speculating about traffic being rerouted through “unsafe” transit like Sparkle (called out on isbgpsafeyet.com) for easier spying. Another camp asks: is this just noisy routing or a deliberate route leak? Meanwhile, the doomsday crew imagines cyber moves that could flip city power grids off like a light switch. The thread’s drama peaks with “what capabilities didn’t they use?” vs. “show me similar anomalies on Christmas/New Year’s,” and one commenter drops a cold take: “watch Greenland or Canada next.” Humor, of course, finds a way: memes about “Space Cyber Xmas gifts” and “routers going rogue” pepper the speculation. Whether it’s a smoking gun or a spooky coincidence, the community’s verdict is split — but extremely online
Key Points
- •Cloudflare Radar data showed route leak anomalies for Venezuela’s CANTV (AS8048) on January 2, with eight prefixes routed through atypical AS paths.
- •Anomalous AS paths included transit through Sparkle (Italian) and GlobeNet (Colombian), placing CANTV in paths it usually does not appear in.
- •A spike in BGP announcements and a dip in announced IP address space were observed leading up to the events, with the dip’s significance unclear.
- •Sparkle is listed as “unsafe” on isbgpsafeyet.com for not implementing RPKI filtering, highlighting potential security risks.
- •Using RIPE RIS datasets and bgpdump, the author identified specific affected prefixes (e.g., 200.74.228.0/23, 200.74.236.0/23) and detailed abnormal AS paths.