Operation Timeline Correlation

Chronological analysis connecting BGP anomalies to subsequent military events, questioning causation versus correlation, and the value of timing analysis in OSINT.

The discussion explores whether BGP anomalies can serve as a reliable "canary in the coal mine" for imminent military action, with some suggesting these patterns could even be leveraged for financial gain on geopolitical prediction markets. While skeptics argue that these routing shifts might be accidental side effects of technical disruptions like power outages or cable cuts, others point out that the significant time lead—occurring nearly 24 hours before kinetic strikes—suggests a deliberate precursor rather than a consequence. Ultimately, the comments highlight a fundamental tension in OSINT analysis: determining whether network fluctuations represent a calculated cyber strategy or merely an incidental symptom of broader operational activities.

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There were reports they had considered Christmas Day and New Year's Day. I wonder if it was far enough along that you could see similar BGP anomalies around those times.

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Not from the cloudflare dashboard, you can zoom out. The night of the attack doesnt even really stand out as abnormal when zooming out that far.

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So you're saying I can't set an alert for these conditions and use the timing to place a quick bet on the geopolitical polymarket du-jour?

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/one-polymarket-user-made-more...

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Yeah, I was thinking it definitely needs to be correlated to geopolitical tensions in some way. Polymarket data might be helpful in this case- and provides incentives for putting this kind of data together.

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I wonder if this can be monitored on a global scale as a sort of predictor of “something gonna happen at country X”.

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Alternative theory: Part of the operation caused power outages or disrupted some connections, the BGP anomalies were a result of that.

The data would make that more likely, because deliberately adding a longer route doesn't achieve much. It's not usually going to get any traffic.

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The BGP anomalies were 24-hours~ before the power outage, so I'm not sure I follow what you're arguing.

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What I mean is that cause and effect here could be different then the author thinks. We see some route changes, but those changes make no sense on their own since they wouldn't capture any traffic. That makes it more probable that BGP was not the attack, but that some other action caused this BGP anomalie as a side effect.

For example, maybe some misconfiguration caused these routes to be published because another route was lost. Which could very well be the actual cyber attack, or the effect of jamming, or breaking some undersea cable, or turning off the power to some place.

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I think what the other commenter is saying is that the BGP changes happened 12 hours before any of the power loss/bomb drop, so that eliminates your primary cause.

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