Also see https://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb/papers/v6worms.pdf (Worm propagation strategies in an IPv6 Internet. ;login:, pages 70-76, February 2006.) On Apr 20, 2012, at 3:08 50AM, Fernando Gont wrote:
FYI
-------- Original Message -------- Subject: IPv6 host scanning in IPv6 Date: Fri, 20 Apr 2012 03:57:48 -0300 From: Fernando Gont <fgont@si6networks.com> Organization: SI6 Networks To: IPv6 Hackers Mailing List <ipv6hackers@lists.si6networks.com>
Folks,
We've just published an IETF internet-draft about IPv6 host scanning attacks.
The aforementioned document is available at: <http://www.ietf.org/id/draft-gont-opsec-ipv6-host-scanning-00.txt>
The Abstract of the document is: ---- cut here ---- IPv6 offers a much larger address space than that of its IPv4 counterpart. The standard /64 IPv6 subnets can (in theory) accommodate approximately 1.844 * 10^19 hosts, thus resulting in a much lower host density (#hosts/#addresses) than their IPv4 counterparts. As a result, it is widely assumed that it would take a tremendous effort to perform host scanning attacks against IPv6 networks, and therefore IPv6 host scanning attacks have long been considered unfeasible. This document analyzes the IPv6 address configuration policies implemented in most popular IPv6 stacks, and identifies a number of patterns in the resulting addresses lead to a tremendous reduction in the host address search space, thus dismantling the myth that IPv6 host scanning attacks are unfeasible. ---- cut here ----
Any comments will be very welcome (note: this is a drafty initial version, with lots of stuff still to be added... but hopefully a good starting point, and a nice reading ;-) ).
Thanks!
Best regards,
--Steve Bellovin, https://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb