Rogers Nationwide Outage: Removed Routing Filter Floods Core Routers
On 8 July 2022, a configuration change in Rogers Communications' IP core caused a nationwide outage lasting more than a day for over 12 million wireless and wireline customers, disrupting 911 calls, Interac debit payments and some government services.
02Deep-Dive Technical Analysis
During the sixth phase of a seven-phase core-network upgrade, staff removed an Access Control List policy filter from distribution routers. Without it, the distribution routers flooded the core with routing information beyond the core routers' capacity, and they crashed within minutes. The CRTC-commissioned Xona Partners report found the core routers lacked overload protection (a maximum-route limit), change management failed to flag the error, and wireless and wireline shared one common core so both failed together. Without independent management connectivity, diagnosing the root cause took about 14 hours.
03Vulnerability & Exploit Flow
Deletion of a routing policy filter flooded core routers lacking route-limit protection, causing a cascading crash.
04Recommended Defense & Mitigation Protocol
Maximum-route limits on core routers, a separate out-of-band management network, stricter change audits and emergency roaming for 911.
05Security Impact & Geopolitical Consequence
Triggered CRTC investigations, an inter-carrier agreement on emergency roaming, mutual assistance and 911 continuity, and a public resiliency report.
06Authoritative Standards & External References
07Related Topic Cluster Records
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