Recent IPv6 Security Standardization Efforts

March 18, 2014 (at 9 a.m.)

During the last few years, a number of IPv6 security efforts sparked at the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) — the organization in charge of standardizing the internet protocols. The aforementioned efforts have ranged from informational documents aimed at raising awareness and/or providing advice to the network operations community, to new protocol features or modifications aimed at mitigating identified vulnerabilities. Particularly in the case of new protocol features and modifications, these security efforts span communities other than that of the IETF, since the practical benefits of these new standards rely on whether networking devices implement the new specifications. Thus, it may be challenging not only to keep track of the new or ongoing IPv6 security efforts at the IETF, but also of keeping track of how such efforts relate into actual implementations. Fernando Gont will provide an overview of all recent IPv6 security efforts at the IETF, summarizing the key aspects of each of them. Additionally, he will comment on their state of implementation by the most popular operating systems, providing the audience a snapshot of the latest advancements in the IPv6 standardization community, and the impact of the aforementioned work on the vendor and network operations community.

Fernando Gont

Fernando Gont specializes in the field of communications protocols security, working for private and governmental organizations around the world.

Gont has worked on a number of projects for the UK National Infrastructure Security Co-ordination Centre (NISCC) and the UK Centre for the Protection of National Infrastructure (CPNI) in the field of communications protocols security. As part of his work for these organizations, he has written a series of documents with recommendations for network engineers and implementers of the TCP/IP protocol suite, and has performed the first thorough security assessment of the IPv6 protocol suite.

Gont is currently working as a security consultant and researcher for SI6 Networks. Additionally, he is a member of the Centro de Estudios de Informatica (CEDI) at Universidad Tecnológica Nacional/Facultad Regional Haedo (UTN/FRH) of Argentina, where he works in the field of Internet engineering. As part of his work, he is active in several working groups of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), and has published more than twenty IETF RFCs (Request For Comments) and more than a dozen IETF Internet-Drafts.

Gont has also produced the SI6 Network's IPv6 Toolkit -- a portable and comprehensive security assessment and troubleshooting toolkit for the IPv6 protocol suite. Furthermore he has been a speaker at a number of conferences and technical meetings about information security, operating systems, and Internet engineering, including: CanSecWest 2005, FIRST Technical Colloquium 2005, Kernel Conference Australia 2009, HACK.LU 2011, DEEPSEC 2011, Hackito Ergo Sum 2012, Hack In Paris 2013, German IPv6 Kongress 2014, IPv6 Security Summit 2014, and H2HC 2014. Additionally, he is a regular attendee of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) meetings.

More information about Fernando Gont is available at his personal web site.