Network Reconnaissance in IPv6 Networks
RFC 7707, “Network Reconnaissance in IPv6 Networks”, is an Informational document published in March 2016 by F. Gont, T. Chown. It obsoletes RFC 5157. The canonical text is published by the RFC Editor.
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 fewer unique addresses. As a result, it is widely assumed that it would take a tremendous effort to perform address-scanning attacks against IPv6 networks; therefore, IPv6 address-scanning attacks have been considered unfeasible. This document formally obsoletes 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.
What “Informational” means
Published for the general information of the community. It does not define an IETF standard and carries no standards-track status.
The canonical text of RFC 7707 is hosted at rfc-editor.org. Available in TXT,HTML.
- RFC 7715 Multipoint LDP Node Protection
- RFC 7697 MPLS Transport Profile Operations, Administration, and Maintenance Identifiers Management Information Base
- RFC 7721 Security and Privacy Considerations for IPv6 Address Generation Mechanisms
- RFC 7723 Port Control Protocol Anycast Addresses
- RFC 7690 Close Encounters of the ICMP Type 2 Kind (Near Misses with ICMPv6 Packet Too Big )
- RFC 7725 An HTTP Status Code to Report Legal Obstacles
- RFC 7726 Clarifying Procedures for Establishing BFD Sessions for MPLS Label Switched Paths
- RFC 7727 Spanning Tree Protocol Application of the Inter-Chassis Communication Protocol