IPv6 in this part of the planet is not very advanced, as in the deployment isn't. Whilst companies and telcos realise that the end so to speak is nigh for IPv4 uptake is rather slow in AU at least. Telcos are however quickly addressing this and no doubt a number of them are close to enabling IPv6 to your gateway. If they haven't already. This brings be to my favourite devices, firewalls.

During a bunch of security reviews over the last year or so we typically spend a little bit of time looking at the IPv6 setups and requirements in the organisations. We certainly found that people quite readily state they have no IPv6 in their environment, however often when they RDP, SSH or otherwise connect to a more recent version of insert your favourite OS here, the connection is most definately IPv6. When you then look at firewall configurations you often find nice looking IPv4 rules to control traffic and a less than ideal default for IPv6 ANY, ANY, ANY permit. So does that mean when your telco enables IPv6 to your gateway, traffic can leave? Potentially yes, it does depend on a number of other factors, but the core of it is that people do not realise they may be leaking. Even if traffic to the internet is restricted, what about other network segments? In a PCI DSS pentest, connectivity via IPv4, nope, nicely segmented. IPv6 please come through, full access.

Another thing to remember with firewalls is that IPv6 is relatively new to them as well. So maybe you need to check out whether your product does support IPv6 and if the answer is yes, to what extent.



What about other devices in the network, your switches and routers. will their current or even latest OS support you IPv6 requirements. Printers, Multifunction devices etc, do they support it. Do they have defaults that really do not help you out from a security perspective.



For today that is what I would like to hear from you. What devices have you come across that have "interesting" IPv6 defaults. Maybe they don't support it fully. Maybe they just get it wrong. One firewall a few years ago (fixed now) did IPv6 to IPv4 translation a bit diferrently and mangled the IPv4 packets that resulted. So what are your IPv6 watch out for this tips?



Mark