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Security in IPv4 vs. IPv6: Exploring the Differences

Dive into the evolution of Internet security from the early days to the IPv6 era. Understand the impact of IPSEC and network security protocols in IPv4 and the astronomical address space of IPv6.

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Security in IPv4 vs. IPv6: Exploring the Differences

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  1. SecurityIPv4 vs. IPv6Is there a difference? Greg Travis Indiana University greg@iu.edu

  2. In the beginning… • The Internet was infinitesimally small, and no one could comprehend its role in the future of society • Networks, as they grew, were built and run by benevolent lords • The security concern of the time was simply a nuclear war

  3. In the beginning… • Security was the concern of the government • Cryptography was within the realm of dark projects • “Secure” communications were defined by the NSA

  4. The IETF said “let there be Autonomous Systems and routing protocols” • and Internet grew and grew • The NSF said “let there be commercialization” • and the Internet grew and grew and grew • Cisco said “let there be e-commerce” • and Cisco grew and grew

  5. In 1993 the IETF said “the sky is falling” • Current state-of-the-art routers couldn’t hold the entire routing table • It was projected that class-B addresses, and eventually all addresses, would be exhausted • Creative IETF members said “we can fix things”, but each had his own plan

  6. “If you’re giving away ice-cream, make sure the scoops are small” • The IETF said “let there be CIDR” • and classless interdomain routing became the efficient way to dole out IP addresses • Others in the IETF said “CIDR is nice, but we’re still going to run out of ice-cream” • “wouldn’t it be nice to have an astronomical amount of ice-cream, they wondered” • Two years later, the IETF invented the equivalent of an astronomical amount of ice-cream: IPv6

  7. Around the same time they were solving the ice-cream problem, the IETF also was dealing with security • SSL was standardized - now TCP connections could be encrypted without the user messing around with keys or passphrases • Standards were emerging for securing the network at the IP layer (would later be called IPSEC)

  8. The difference between “may” and “must” • The IPv6 IETF standard (RFC ) specifies that a full implementation of IPv6 MUST support certain components of IPSEC • IPv4, which was defined before IPSEC, MAY support IPSEC • In reality, some IPv6 stacks don’t support IPSEC and many IPv4 stacks do. • There are no additional security features if IPv6! In fact, IPv4 does have additional required security features (but they’re not used)

  9. IPv6 does have an astronomical number of addresses • This does allow for the flexibility to build network topologies which support attribution at the network layer. • You can make quite a mess with an astronomical amount of ice-cream.

  10. The argument for IPv6 is to maintain the flexibility of supporting the end-to-end network model. IMHO, it has nothing to do with security

  11. Want to make a network less secure, migrate to IPv6 early

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