 "The diverted traffic appeared to be used to send e-mail and route virtual private networks, as well as for other purposes. As the picture above illustrates, the roundabout path caused the data to travel thousands of miles to the Ukrainian capital of Kiev before turning around, retracing that route, and being delivered to its normal hub in London. Unnecessarily sending the data to Kiev may have made it possible for employees with privileged network access to Ukrainian telecom provider Vega to monitor or tamper with data that wasn't encrypted end-to-end using strong cryptography. The hijacking of the Atomic Weapons Establishment, Lockheed, and the other 165 routes occurred over a 90-minute span on Thursday, while a handful of British Telecom customers experienced diverted traffic for five days beginning Saturday."
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