January 8, 2026
Fat finger or spy thriller?
A closer look at a BGP anomaly in Venezuela
Glitch or spy games? Venezuela’s internet “wrong turn” sparks fat‑finger memes and snoop-theory brawls
TLDR: Cloudflare says Venezuela’s routing weirdness likely came from a misconfigured provider, not spycraft, after seeing 11 similar leaks. Commenters battled over “accident vs. surveillance,” joked about the “scenic route,” and demanded global stats—highlighting how fragile Internet plumbing can sway traffic during tense moments.
Cloudflare just poked into a weird Internet routing blip in Venezuela and, surprise, the comments section turned into a courtroom drama. The blog suggests the culprit is likely a sloppy setup at CANTV (the big local provider) after spotting 11 similar mishaps since December. Translation: the Internet’s map system (called BGP) took a wrong exit, not a secret detour. And the crowd had thoughts.
On Team Oopsie, one commenter cheered the analysis that padding the route to look longer screams “not a spy,” joking it’s the “long scenic route” — the opposite of what a snoop would want. Another called it a “classic fat finger.” Meanwhile, the suspense squad wanted receipts: one user challenged Cloudflare’s “this happens all the time” vibe, asking for global stats, not just this provider’s record. And of course, the spy-thriller contingent popped in with “okay, but how would you actually pull off a man‑in‑the‑middle?” because the plot must thicken.
Amid links to past Venezuela outage chatter and praise for Cloudflare’s “crazy” visibility, the mood settled into a spicy split: accident vs. espionage. But the running joke won the day — if you were trying to eavesdrop, you wouldn’t wave a giant “don’t come this way” sign at the world’s routers. Scenic route memes: undefeated.
Key Points
- •Cloudflare investigated a January 2 BGP routing leak in Venezuela noted by a cybersecurity newsletter using Cloudflare Radar data.
- •Cloudflare found eleven route leak events since early December affecting multiple prefixes, with AS8048 (CANTV) as the leaker.
- •The pattern suggests CANTV has insufficient routing export/import policies, indicating misconfiguration rather than intentional malfeasance.
- •The post explains BGP route leaks per RFC7908 and outlines customer-provider and peer-peer relationships among Autonomous Systems.
- •Valley-free routing is highlighted as the rule violated by route leaks, causing suboptimal paths and potential delays.