Security Vulnerabilities in ‘Future of the Web’-IPv6 Protocol Suite

The concept of ‘Web’ has been possible because of interconnection of devices and these interconnections have been possible because of a network layer protocol-IPv4. Internet Protocol Version 4(IPv4)has been in existence for about 20 years and was responsible for revolutionizing the Internet. Lately, however the number of devices on the network has increased manifolds. IPv4 has not been able to cope up. It has been running out of addresses. Thus IPv6 has come into picture with an enormous address space, solving the address problem for many years in the future. IPv6 has become the future of the web. In fact with the idea of ‘always connected’ devices, millions of systems are connected to the web at the same time. Only a protocol like IPv6 can support such a huge number of devices.

But IPv6 comes with its own set of security concerns. These are largely unexplored and therefore most of the network administrators are still wary of deploying IPv6 over their networks. This paper covers the vulnerabilities and security threats to IPv6 and their possible solutions.