Beware of IPv6 security goblins, IETF warns

With World IPv6 Day just six weeks away, security consultants are once again warning that networks transitioning to the Internet's next-generation addressing scheme face serious risks unless they modify their defenses to accommodate the changes. In a draft proposal filed Tuesday with the Internet Engineering Task Force, a security consultant warned that IPv6 traffic is often able to bypass firewalls, intrusion detection systems, and other security protections. With the majority of end-user devices now speaking the new language by default, their use may have serious unintended consequences. "Most general-purpose operating systems implement and enable by default native IPv6 support and a number of transition-co-existence technologies," Fernando Gont of the UK Centre for the Protection of National Infrastructure wrote. "In those cases in which such devices are deployed on networks that are assumed to be IPv4-only, the aforementioned technologies could be leveraged by local or remote attackers ...

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