Adopting a new addressing scheme is proving to be a herculean task. Not only is it giving researchers headaches, it seems it will give those who plan on adopting it (which is most likely everyone) a lot of challenges when it comes to security.

The roll-out of Internet Protocol Version 6 (IPv6) is inevitable since the older system (IPv4) is about to utilize all of its remaining addresses. This leaves IT professionals with great challenges when it comes to overcoming the many security threats the new system will be exposed to.

According to a speaker from the San Francisco City College’s Computer Networking and Information Technology Department, IPv6 is a “security nightmare”. With the new system using 128-bit scheme, it renders current firewalls, security devices, and other related appliances useless. This means that people using the system would be opening their networks to attack unless they are able to conform to the new system.

What’s interesting to note is that the new protocol uses your computer’s real MAC (Media Access Control) address to help identify your computer whenever you are online. This means that people won’t be able to stay anonymous while using the net unless they take active steps in doing so.

Although some operating systems like Windows Vista and Windows 7 have features that help users stay anonymous, trying to stay that way may interfere with regular end-to-end communications. Companies would surely be glad with this improvement as it would help them monitor their employee’s internet use.

IPv6 will be offering many new features like an easier method of encryption between end-to-end communications that will hopefully help make networking a little bit more secure. Joe Klein, subject matter expert (SME) of the North American IPv6 task force, was optimistic that the knowledge learned while using IPv4 would help in perfecting IPv6. He projects that it will take about 5 to 10 years before this new system would be able to provide e stable end-to-end encryption.

Google is one company who has shown that it has trouble adapting to the new system. An expert even pointed out that IPv6 could be exposed to Packet amplification attacks and Ping-pong exploits. This could result in a lot of garbage data floating around in many networks.

We may not have a choice as the 4 billion unique addresses IPv4 provides may be used up in the coming year. IPv6 will provide about 3.4 x 10 to the 38^th power addresses to fill this gap. Many in the IT field will soon have to study this new system or be left behind. For more information on IPv6 check out Sam Browne’s talk during last week’s Defcon conference.

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