Abstract
Customer edge routers are the primary mode of connection to the Internet for a large portion of non-commercial users. As these consumer networks migrate from IPv4 to IPv6, stateful firewalls are needed to protect devices in the home. However, policy details crucial to the implementation of these inbound access controls are left to the discretion of the device manufacturers. In this paper, we survey ten customer edge routers to evaluate how manufacturers implement firewalls and user controls in IPv6. The result is a systemic, demonstrable failure among all parties to agree upon, implement, and communicate consistent security policies. We conclude with future research directions and recommendations for all parties to address these systemic failures and provide a consistent model for home security.
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Responsible Disclosure Given the severity of enabling IPv6 support by default and a default-permit posture, we disclosed our findings to both Motorola and TP-Link in August 2020. In November 2020, Motorola issued a public patch to correct the issue. TP-Link did not respond to our disclosure.
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Olson, K., Wampler, J., Shen, F., Scaife, N. (2021). NATting Else Matters: Evaluating IPv6 Access Control Policies in Residential Networks. In: Hohlfeld, O., Lutu, A., Levin, D. (eds) Passive and Active Measurement. PAM 2021. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 12671. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-72582-2_22
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-72582-2_22
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