Internet outage in Japan takes down online services

The downtime was caused by a BGM route hijack that began at 12:22 PM local Japan time and was resolved by 1:01 PM. In Japan, this resulted in many online services going down and nearly 8 million Internet connections affected, according to BleepingComputer. Users could not access online banking portals, reservation systems, government portals, and more. Furthermore, outside users could not connect to the Nintendo networks or various online marketplaces hosted in Japan.

According to BGPMon, Google hijacked the traffic NTT Communications, a major Internet service provider (ISP), who also supports two smaller ISPs named OCN and KDDI. In total, NTT provides Internet services to 7.67 million home users and 480,000 companies.

Even if the issue was resolved in under 40 minutes, it was enough to cause panic in Japan. A Google spokesperson admitted the companys blunder in a statement to another local news outlet. The Internal Affairs and Communications Ministry has started an investigation into the incident and has requested that ISPs file detailed reports on what happened, according to local press.