  BGP prefix hijacking is a threat to Internet operators and users. Several
mechanisms or modifications to BGP that protect the Internet against it have
been proposed. However, the reality is that most operators have not deployed
them and are reluctant to do so in the near future. Instead, they rely on basic
- and often inefficient - proactive defenses to reduce the impact of hijacking
events, or on detection based on third party services and reactive approaches
that might take up to several hours. In this work, we present the results of a
survey we conducted among 75 network operators to study: (a) the operators'
awareness of BGP prefix hijacking attacks, (b) presently used defenses (if any)
against BGP prefix hijacking, (c) the willingness to adopt new defense
mechanisms, and (d) reasons that may hinder the deployment of BGP prefix
hijacking defenses. We expect the findings of this survey to increase the
understanding of existing BGP hijacking defenses and the needs of network
operators, as well as contribute towards designing new defense mechanisms that
satisfy the requirements of the operators.
