Several BGP routing anomalies occurred on January 2, a day before the US launched an operation to capture Venezuela’s president. This anomaly, which was identified by a security researcher using Cloudflare radar data, showed that 8 prefixes were leaked from Venezuela’s state-owned telecom (CANTV – AS8048) to an Italian transit provider (Sparkle – AS6762) and a Colombian carrier (GlobeNet – AS52320). BGP is inherently insecure, and while RPKI with signed announcements can help prevent route hijacks, neither Sparkle nor the paths in question had full RPKI protection.

In response to this research (linked below), Cloudflare published their own blog post acknowledging that BGP anomalies happen all the time and that 11 BGP leaks affected this ISP since the beginning of December. Cloudflare suggests that the routing practices could be behind the anomalies rather than acts of malfeasance. However, they acknowledge that they can’t say for certain that this is not a deliberate act tied to the blackout that occurred.

In my personal view, the timing and the fact that the leaked prefixes contained critical infrastructure (Banks, ISPs, Medial Facilities, manufacturing, email services) makes this incredibly suspicious. We know that Cyber command posses the traffic injection and inspection capabilities that could enable this type of activity. Hiding offensive cyber activity inside what appears to be routine internet routing noise is exactly the kind of approach that Cyber Command and the IC would use. This ambiguity makes it extremely difficult to determine whether the event was an innocent anomaly or a deliberate cyber operation.

Original blog post from Graham Helton: https://lnkd.in/deigDwFP
Cloudflare’s blog post: https://lnkd.in/d7QAwVbZ

As 2026 begins, I wanted to take a moment to look back on 2025. To do that, I created a short montage highlighting the news stories of 2025 that stayed with me.

The year started off with widespread destruction caused by 14 interconnected wildland interface fires around Los Angeles, including the Eaton, Palisades, and Altadena fires, which destroyed thousands of buildings and homes. The rise of DeepSeek’s R1 model rattled the US stock market and raised critical questions around security and privacy under China’s national intelligence law. Although aviation is incredibly safe, it is concerning that 4 passenger aircraft accidents occurred in 2025 resulting in 366 fatalities. In space news, Isar Aerospace had their first launch attempt from Europe, while SpaceX flew Starship 5 times as it continued to resolve Starship engine bay fire issues which resulted in the loss of several vehicles after leaving Earth’s atmosphere. SpaceX did all of this while still launching 165 Falcon 9 missions.

Eurovision was once again a personal highlight, celebrating creativity and music while pushing the boundaries of live production. With over 4500 lights across 800 universes, the show exceeded the software and hardware limitations of MA, requiring production to be run across several sessions across consoles. It was also the first year to see timecoded drones used a major live broadcast instead of radio-based systems.

A stand out moment of 2025 was Poland’s firm and direct rebuke at Russia at the United Nations Security Council following repeated violations of its airspace.