The IESG has received a request from the Operational Security Capabilities for IP Network Infrastructure WG (opsec) to consider the following document: - 'Network Reconnaissance in IPv6 Networks' <draft-ietf-opsec-ipv6-host-scanning-07.txt> as Informational RFC The IESG plans to make a decision in the next few weeks, and solicits final comments on this action. Please send substantive comments to the ietf@ietf.org mailing lists by 2015-07-08. Exceptionally, comments may be sent to iesg@ietf.org instead. In either case, please retain the beginning of the Subject line to allow automated sorting. Abstract IPv6 offers a much larger address space than that of its IPv4 counterpart. An IPv6 subnet of size /64 can (in theory) accommodate approximately 1.844 * 10^19 hosts, thus resulting in a much lower host density (#hosts/#addresses) than is typical in IPv4 networks, where a site typically has 65,000 or less unique addresses. As a result, it is widely assumed that it would take a tremendous effort to perform address scanning attacks against IPv6 networks, and therefore brute-force IPv6 address scanning attacks have been considered unfeasible. This document updates RFC 5157, which first discussed this assumption, by providing further analysis on how traditional address scanning techniques apply to IPv6 networks, and exploring some additional techniques that can be employed for IPv6 network reconnaissance. In doing so, this document formally obsoletes RFC 5157. The file can be obtained via https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-ietf-opsec-ipv6-host-scanning/ IESG discussion can be tracked via https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-ietf-opsec-ipv6-host-scanning/ballot/ No IPR declarations have been submitted directly on this I-D.
