Spy Games or Glitch? The Truth Behind Venezuela’s BGP Leak

Cloudflare researchers assessed a BGP route leak involving Venezuela’s CANTV (AS8048) on January 2, 2026, and determined it was most likely caused by misconfiguration rather than an intentional hijack. Indicators included extreme AS-path prepending, a history of similar leaks since December 2025, and CANTV’s upstream role for Dayco Telecom, which undercut espionage theories; routing through Sparkle and an unchanged origin also explained why RPKI ROV would not have mitigated the issue. The report highlights adopting ASPA, RFC 9234, and the Only-to-Customer attribute to prevent hairpin leaks and improve BGP security resilience.